Last week I offered part one of a two-part bulletin article on “Vision,” the goal for year two of Beacons of Light. I wrote about how key a vision is to get somewhere better than we are now. Without vision (as a person or a parish family) we wander, devolve and symbolically and literally die! This week I’d like to relate some of the logistics of how we will create a vision for Crescent Parishes.
Who is Leading Our Visioning Process?
I am joyful that two very competent people will be helping to lead the visioning process in our parishes: Bill Lenard and Brian Kohr.
Bill is a member of our Parish Leadership Team. But not a paid staff person. Shortly after I arrived in our parishes, Bill pulled me aside and offered his gifts and talents for strategic planning, for which he was employed by Procter and Gamble. In addition, Bill has a most unique experience of being president of a Catholic pastoral council, without being fully Catholic! Before becoming fully Catholic, Bill and Mary attended each of their respective Churches every week, sharing their many gifts and talents to the point where Bill was elected to Nativity’s pastoral council and then elected as president! In fact, one newly assigned priest didn’t know Bill wasn’t fully Catholic!
Brian Kohr’s story is inspiring too. Over the past two decades, he, his wife, Jill, and his two children were involved in several Dayton parishes as they moved locations. Brian completed a stewardship card in my second year at Incarnation. He told me about how he had been a corporate CEO and that he was a consultant in corporate strategic planning. He was inspired by a book called “Half Time: Moving from Success to Significance,” by Bob Buford, and was wanting to spend more giving back. He became a member of pastoral council and led Incarnation Church through a strategic planning process two years before Beacons of Light was born. He has also been a coach to me and a wonderful support and friend. Brian is our new parish liaison with Beacons of Light. What is a liaison?
Backstory for Beacons Liaison
As Beacons began, the archdiocese conducted a search for people skilled in leadership and management who could help pastors and staff accomplish the goals of Beacons of Light. They are paid a small stipend from a grant, but mainly theirs is a ministry of service. I received a liaison early in the Beacons process and it was good to work with him, however, he was overextended and was not able to meet with staff. Since our first liaison relationship ended about eight months ago, one of the people in the Archdiocesan Office of Parish Vitality kept asking me if I wanted a new liaison. Since I have great confidence in our talented staff and parish leadership team, I kept declining until he told me he had a specific new liaison in mind. When he said it was Brian Kohr, I was all in!
Explaining the Process
Bill has explained to the Parish Leadership Team and Pastoral Councils the four-month process they have planned. In January they will do the same with all staff and parishioners. We hope to have at least fifty to sixty people directly involved in the process of creating the vision statement. Then staff and leadership bodies will discern how to implement the vision in ongoing ways. Parishioners will be involved as they engage with pastoral council members, whose names are in most every bulletin.
As a kind of an aside, there are at least two items from the town hall meetings that I would like to relate to the visioning process.
A first very common observation at the town hall sessions was that we should speed up the unifying process and that we don’t need five years. In one sense, I am all for getting things done sooner rather than later. However, while we could combine sooner because we are not bound to a five-year timeline, and while we are in many ways out ahead of most parish families, there might be great wisdom in taking enough time to share more about who we are and where we want to go, so as to get buy-in from more parishioners.
Learning from History
I’m wondering about this based on what I have heard from Holy Trinity Church and the Church of the Resurrection in their previous merging processes. Specifically, they recognized that some parishioners were lost at the mergers. (By the way, this was a second often heard fear from the town hall meetings.) Those mergers happened relatively quickly and then, after the mergers, they figured out some very important things such as vision and mission. Perhaps, learning from past mergers, Beacons of Light is recommending a different approach to keep more people in the fold!
Advent, Christmas and Epiphany Family concert
Thanks to those who are striving to respect the preparatory natures of the Advent season, holding off on celebrating Christmas until the Christmas Season, which lasts until January 8 this year. Also please save the date on your calendar for the Crescent Family Epiphany Concert. Sunday, January 7th, 3:00 pm at St. John the Evangelist.