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Ministry summit focuses on change

Participants are prepped on causing and dealing effectively with changes by recognizing the effects of human dynamics of the process.

DENISE O’TOOLE KELLY | FLORIDA CATHOLIC STAFF

Published: 05.01.08

ORLANDO | About 1,200 Catholic lay and religious ministers and clergy talked a lot about change — change that has been thrust upon the church as well as change that should be made in response — during an unprecedented summit here in late April.

But participants in the “National Ministry Summit: Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership” April 20-23 also heard that research shows 75 percent of significant change efforts fail. A key to keeping the ideas put forth at the joint meeting of six national Catholic groups from going the way of the typical New Year’s resolution is to recognize the human dynamics that subvert change, according to a leadership expert who gave a keynote speech about midway through the conference.

“Any adaptive challenge involves loss, even if the change is a good one and something we really desire,” said Sister Terri Monroe, director of the Leadership Institute at the University of San Diego, and a consultant to nonprofit and church-related organizations.

Sister Monroe, Society of the Sacred Heart, said many who seek to be agents of change base their leadership on observable behaviors of people as individuals and within the organizational culture without considering what’s bubbling below the surface.

“You need to view the change for all from all of these windows or it is unlikely to succeed,” she said. “What kind of loss is it going to involve for the people engaged in this?”

Among the changes some of the assembled ministry leaders said they would seek to effect when they returned to their dioceses and parishes were expanding the pastoral role of lay ministers and encouraging more diverse leadership in parishes and other entities. These are appropriate responses, some said, to changes that already have occurred in the church, including an increase in the number of Catholics, a more-educated laity, a decrease in the number of priests and vowed religious, an increase in permanent deacons and professional lay ecclesial ministers and growing cultural diversity in the church.

Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Rapid City, S.D., another keynote speaker for the conference and episcopal adviser for the grant-funded Emerging Models project that brought the six groups together, said the growing emphasis on lay involvement is more than just a practical move.

“Lay ministry is not about filling in the gap because of a shortage of ordained ministers and it’s not about a struggle for the rights of people,” said Bishop Cupich, speaking in an interview during a break April 21. He said the growing emphasis on lay involvement is a sign of maturation and ongoing conversion in the church that “flows out of a call to holiness, in which we see ourselves as the body of Christ.”

On the final day of the conference, participants said looking around the room was enough to demonstrate how far there is to go in diversifying the leadership of church ministry, in terms of race and ethnicity as well as age. With 91 percent of attendees identifying as white or Caucasian, and 70 percent between ages 50 and 69, speakers wondered about the summit’s ability to adequately speak for the more diverse parts of the church, which has a growing Hispanic and intercultural population.

“Look around this room,” said Greg Welch, a young adult minister from Renew International. “We are very white and very white-haired. Where are the Hispanics? Where are the young adults?”

ENDNOTE: The participating groups were the National Association for Lay Ministry, Conference for Pastoral Planning and Council Development, National Association of Church Personnel Administrators, National Association of Diaconate Directors, National Catholic Young Adult Ministry Association and National Federation of Priest Councils.

Karen Osborne of the Florida Catholic staff contributed to this story.

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Ministry summit focuses on change

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