June 22, 2008

Dear friends in life and in ministry . . .

The past week included times of rest, reflection and high energy ministry.

On Sunday (June 15) Pat and I left for what was originally planned as a week of vacation style settling at Catholic House at the Chautauqua Institution. The week was to include a day or two of moderate activity, a retreat day with the Catholic Community here at Chautauqua and a Thursday meeting and luncheon with the leaders of the numerous denominational houses that provide affordable housing for visitors to this very pricey locale.

A tiny but persistent kidney stone redefined one of those "vacation" days as a "sick" day. Thankfully, the stone was set free by Monday evening and my vacation agenda resumed until Thursday afternoon.

Somewhere along the way, in spite of this being a scheduled vacation week, I committed myself to celebrating the recent out of town marriage of the daughter of a parish couple by renewing their vows at a post wedding reception. So I returned to Bath on Thursday afternoon using any unscheduled time to visit several ill parishioners, spend a few hours with grandson Jack and accept a last minute invitation to bless the 65 year old vows of a not-so-recently wed couple.

Thanks to Fr. Dan Condon who has been presiding at our weekend Masses during June on an interim basis, I was able to return to Catholic House on Saturday afternoon for a rare weekend away from the parish. On Tuesday, I'll return to Bath to welcome our new priest Fr. Jim Jaeger and get him settled at the rectory.

My column this week included a report from my friend and fellow pastoral administrator Charlotte Bruney who attended the National Ministry Summit which took place this Spring in Orlando. She reported that the Summit's theme of Emerging Models of Parish Leadership included some very interesting and important findings. I've folded this information and some local ramifications into a two part column, the first of which I share with you this weekend. Interesting stuff - especially for those of you whose parish or diocese is involved in pastoral planning.

Birthday greetings to Rosa Fiordo who celebrates 99 years of extraordinary life this weekend.

This Week's Column: June 22, 2008 - Emerging Models of Parish Leadership - Part One

This past April, my friend Charlotte Bruney who is the pastoral administrator of St. Vincent de Paul Church in Churchville, NY attended the National Ministry Summit in Orlando, Florida, as one of four representatives from the Diocese of Rochester. In her “Charlotte’s Web” bulletin column she recently shared some information that I found very interesting.

The National Ministry Summit was the first conference of its kind, looking at the future of pastoral leadership in this country. There were over 1300 people in attendance (55% were lay leaders, 45% were priests and deacons). Participants came from six continents and all fifty U.S. states. Four years in preparation, the purpose of this summit was to share the results of research conducted under the umbrella of the “Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership” project. The research focused on six specific areas: (1) multiple parish ministry, (2) parishes (like ours) with someone other than a priest functioning as pastor, (3) Young Adults, the next generation of parish leadership, (4) implications for diocesan Human Resource offices, (5) multicultural challenges, and (6) best practices in pastoral leadership.

Conference attendees heard from Rapid City Bishop Blase Cupich, who was the liaison from the U. S. Catholic Conference of Bishops to the Emerging Models Project. He acknowledged that the picture of the typical American parish had changed dramatically over the last thirty years, and challenged attendees to think creatively about those changes.

Bishop Cupich described the role of the pastoral leader as the one who holds the vision for the community of faith, who reminds the “establishment” of why it was established, keeping the faith community’s attention on the mission of Christ. He suggested that pastors and pastoral administrators are to be the “orchestrators of gifts” . (I know some parishioners have referred to what I do as “arm twisting”. But, “orchestrating” the gifts of parishioners requires that I sometimes encourage and challenge people to share their time, talents and treasure as part of the parish’s ministry.

In terms of the research, you may be surprised to hear that already in the United States, 44% of parishes share a pastor with at least one other parish and that 616 U.S. parishes (in 110 dioceses) currently employ the pastoral administrator-sacramental minister model of leadership that we have here at St. Mary’s. 60% of pastoral administrators are female, but the current trend among the U.S. bishops is to appoint deacons rather than lay people to this role. This is not true in the Diocese of Rochester which historically has called mostly women religious and lay women to serve as pastoral administrators. Of the sixteen pastoral administrators currently serving the Diocese of Rochester, only three are deacons.

Emerging Models research also indicated that U.S. Catholics are 25% of our national demographic but make up only 6% of the world’s Catholics. Nevertheless, our relative prosperity and political prowess make American Catholics disproportionately powerful in comparison to the vast majority of Catholics around the globe. In this country, there is still one priest for every 3000 Catholics. In South America, that ratio is only 1:70,000. Many places have the opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist only rarely, and are necessarily finding new ways to be Catholic, while we worry about whether or not we can have Mass at a “convenient” time!

More on the local ramifications of this research next week.

Have a good week. Serve one another well.

Deacon Ray

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Bulletin: June 22nd, 2008