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How is Collaboration a How is Collaboration a Key to Leadership in Key to Leadership in Parishes and Beyond? Parishes and Beyond?

How is Collaboration a How is Collaboration a Key to Leadership in Key to Leadership in Parishes and Beyond? Parishes and Beyond?

Inspired by the writing of Loughlan Sofield, ST

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What is collaboration?

•Literally, to collaborate is “to work together” toward a common purpose.[1]

[1] Evelyn Eaton Whitehead and James D. Whitehead, The Promise of Partnership: A Model for Collaborative Ministry (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.com, 2000), 52.

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Collaboration is defined as

• “the identification, release, and union of all the gifts in ministry for the sake of mission.” This definition has three key elements. First, the essence of collaborative ministry is gift. Second, collaboration is never an end in itself: it is a vehicle for ministry. Third, the goal of collaborative ministry is always the mission of Jesus Christ.[1]

• [1] Loughlan Sofield and Carole Juliano, 17.

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Why collaborate?

• If the Spirit is present within the community, maybe we have to listen to different wisdom voices.

• Vatican II emphasized the Church as the “People of God,” shifting leadership to a more collaborate one.

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Why does ministry require

collaboration?

• At its core, ministry is an essentially collaborative enterprise.

• Shared vision and spirituality interprets mission and through ongoing action, makes it happen.

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When Collaborating:

• All of those involved bring their lives, perspectives, skills, insight to the process; all of them participate in the mission; all of them illuminate, invite, challenge, engage with it.

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Questions for Leaders

• How can I serve these people’s needs as they face today’s challenges?

• How can I create a Community of the Faithful which fosters, sustains, and experiences committed exemplar disciples?

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Questions for Decision-making

• How can I have the most positive impact on people?

• What guidance does Jesus give to help in making the right choices?

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What is it about Jesus’ leadership that makes him an indispensible

model?

1. His belief in God’s love and message that God’s love transforms.

2. He calls us to participate in that love for God, for ourselves, for others as revelations of God and God’s goodness.

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Why is Jesus the Model for

Leadership?• He was a listener who responded

in a loving way to what he heard• He created a vision (the

Beatitudes) which has a mission and a call to action

• He was compassionate, forgiving, straightforward, inclusive, authentic, empowering, a person of integrity

• Can you cite scriptural examples?

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Why are we about Ministry?

“Ministry has a simple goal: the emergence of the reign of God.”

Cardinal Joseph Bernardin

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Ministry• Ministries are defined within local

parishes as functioning committees which address everything from social justice issues to property maintenance.

• This is ministry but to define it only in terms of such church-related activities is to miss most of the opportunities for extending the reign of God.

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Ministry• Ministry includes both ecclesial

ministry and that ministry carried our in people’s day-to-day lives. Many people view what they do in the marketplace as their ministry – some even describe it as their call.

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Ministry

• Ministry is something encompassing one’s entire life

• Ministry is touching people in profoundly Christian ways in all that we do.

• Ministry is a way of doing something, rather than a particulate occupational role.

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Critical Role of the Church

• To carry out Jesus mission• To be faithful to the call of the Gospel• To promulgate the reality of God’s

love• To manifest the Church’s active and

ongoing presence in the world even as the gospel is proclaimed.

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Ministry extends the reign of God

Bishop Howard Hubbard wrote: “The liturgical, sacramental and educational ministries of the Church exist to prepare people to assume their ministry in the world.”

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Leaders expand Ministry by

• Challenging people to see their home, neighborhood, market place, as venues for proclaiming the Gospel,

• Listening intently and responding compassionately,

• Establishing relationships is at the heart of ministry.

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The Christian Leader• Has a deep personal relationship

with Jesus which can be readily sensed.

• Is open to self-transformation which is a key ingredient for effectiveness

• Attempts to model one’s leadership on the Jesus they have encountered

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What’s wrong here?• “I am so busy doing ministry that

I don’t have time to minister to people.”

• How do I have to change to be more collaborative?

• How do I create ways for mutual dialogue?

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How important is listening?

• Listening is a transaction which pays attention to others listening to what others believe, need or want

• A good leader communicates that the other has been heard

• Leaders create a context in which human exchange will occur.

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Vision – the Goal toward which people

move• A fundamental aspect of vision

is the development of leaders.• Vision energizes; it defines the

desired future which calls the group to action.

• Shared vision flows from dialogue.

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Must be directed toward Jesus’ Mission

• Energy not directed toward maintenance of the status quo

• This makes the Church irrelevant• We strengthen our beliefs and

commitment in order to further this mission and transform the world

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Collaboration is a passage into the Paschal Mystery.

Recognizing the pattern of the dying and rising of Jesus the Christ in our communal efforts, finding there meaning, energy, strength allows us also to know His presence in power and grace; thus our collaboration participates in Christ’s redemptive work. It becomes salvation for us, as well, communion with Him and

with his Body, the Church.

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Collaborative ministry is based upon and

sustained by spirituality which is shared.

• Collaborators are people of prayer who bring their faith to the mission.

• Sofield and Juliano assert that when collaborative efforts are really successful, the people involved are able to share faith, and they do so.

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Be assertive – take a risk step out on a limb

for it!

• Where is it that we want to go?• What is it that we want to

achieve?• Is the vision inwardly or

outwardly focused?

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Collaborative Leaders ask:

• Do I encourage people to use their gifts to bring the gospel to bear on the problems of the disadvantaged?

• Do I challenge people to see their work as the locus of their ministry?

• Do I encourage people to take active roles in supporting issues which influence the quality of life for all?

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Do I ?• Have a “preferential option for the

poor” in my vision?• Or do I give lip service to that value?• Do I see the needs of the spiritually

poor?• Do I witness through my lifestyle?

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Vision: Live as Jesus did

• What “isms” adversely effect people in my parish?

• What “isms” must I confront in the broader society?

• Do I take the initiative to foster, peace, forgiveness, reconciliation, in my personal and communal life?

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The vision is clear:

• live as Jesus did and embrace the words of the gospel as the only criteria for action.

• The parish vision will not be achieved if individual groups establish and follow visions not aligned with that of the parish.

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Collaborative Leaders ask:

• How do I define ministry? • Is my definition broad or narrow?• In my parish does ministry with a capital

“M” take precedence over that with a lower case “m”?

• Do I have a limited view of spirituality that doesn’t extent to the marketplace?

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Ministry with a small “m”

• The workplace serves as the crucible in which the strength of the homiletic messages can be tested.

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3 tasks for Collaborative

Leaders1. To help each member see his or her

baptism as a call to holiness and ministry2. To assist all members to discern and

discover their personal gifts so that they might be used in ministry and service;

3. To foster participation of all the People of God in the mission of the Church.2

2 (retired Archbishop Borders of Baltimore. “We are his People.”

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Servant Leadership3

• Conjures up Jesus’ message in the washing of the apostles’ feet.

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3 In recent years, this title came out of a model for leadership in business put forward by Robert Greenleaf.

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Servant Leadership involves:

• Increased service to others• A more holistic group-oriented

approach to work• Promoting a sense of

community • Sharing of power and decision

making

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Collaboration is rooted in

Community• While the community seeks to

witness the gospel, it will be ineffective without the balance between the work of ministry and the nurturance of their shared values or spirituality, and their mutual concern.[4]

[4] Whiteheads, Promise of Partnership, 60-61.

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Collaborative Leaders ask:

• How do I discover the primary needs of the people I purport to serve?

• How can I foster the development of supportive faith communities?

• How can I improves preaching and our understanding of the word of God?

• Does preaching help bring the community closer together and challenge them to compassionate ministry?

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Good Shepherds• lead by listening and

responding. Shepherds lead from the rear. They are not up front with the sheep following submissively behind, but instead in the rear, encouraging

• and cajoling.

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Characteristics of

Collaborative Leaders

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Integrity• Integrity precedes all other

characteristics of leaders. • Integrity is the crucible of leadership

as people of integrity are passionately committed to doing the right thing regardless of consequences.

• Integrity is not just talking about what

is right, but doing what is right.

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Generativity

• Generative leaders have a mission orientation toward life.

• Generative people are characterized by their empathetic attitudes, concerns, and behaviors.

• Their focus is external, and people-oriented, not narcissistic, self-centered, or

preoccupied with things rather than people.

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Compassion

• Effective leaders combine compassion with competence.

• Jesus, the ultimate model for leaders, was primarily a person of compassion.

• How do I evidence compassion in my leadership role?

What moves me to compassion?

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Joy and Hope• Effective leaders are joyful, hope-filled

people. They are also realists who accept themselves and the world as imperfect, but are not discouraged. They accept the reality of the past but are not held hostage to it.

• What image do I project as leader, a person of joy and hope,

or a person of despondency?

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Effective Leaders need Support

Family, friends, and peers offer:• Support in making difficult, ethical

decisions• Aid in reducing feelings of isolation• An opportunity to feel the care and love of

others• Help with challenging self-defeating

attitudes and behaviors• Exploration of ways to live life fully.

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What does this say to me?

• “Modern man (or woman) listens more willingly to witness than to teachers, and if he/she does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”5

5Pope Paul VI, On Evangelization, chapter 1

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Suggestions1. Talk together about collaboration toward

determining together a common understanding of your collaboration – roles, responsibilities, expectations, hopes. Build in times for social sharing. Listen carefully to one another, to all the members, so that your shared understandings are both shared and understood. Review these when ways to improve are called for through learning

or through necessity.

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2. In attitude and action, consistently relate with reverence and care with all

your constituencies; consider the Common Good as the

unifying framework for all these interrelationships.[1]

[1] Homan, “Formation and Governance,” par. 29. Appendix VII, 2.

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3. Listen carefully to tensions and their sources when deliberating. Follow them respectfully, in order to clarify complexities. Rather than arguing them away, listen for insight they might offer.