PARISH IS GOOD PEOPLE MANAGEMENT

                       

From time to time, discussion in the parish will focus around some of the people that are difficult to work with or resistant. What people are ignoring is that the church is composed of human beings!

 

And human beings can clash, disagree or at times be downright mean to one another! Should we be surprised when we discover such dynamics in the parish community?

 

There will always be people moving into our community and moving out in this modern world. One parishioner, a man in his mid-fifties, told of a very painful situation about the trucking company he worked for three years ago. New management was brought in and eighteen of the thirty-two employees moved on within the first year and two months of the new management’s tenure. Something dysfunctional here!

 

One of the essential qualities for anyone in leadership, in whatever organization or family situation, is how well they will treat other people. What kind of skills do they exercise as people managers?

 

Anyone in leadership in a church must be sensitive enough to recognize how people actually work and who works with whom, and who clashes with others. This is just good common sense. Some people are gifted in this regard. There are situations where a parish erupts in conflict and a new assigned pastor brings harmony and cooperation. Then there are other pastors or leaders whom the  people just walk away from!

 

First, take time to read the community. Are there individuals who are prickly porcupines, who find it difficult to cooperation and work with others? And then, are there dreamers who can talk big, make great plans but never carry out the work? 

 

Do you have family groups within your parish that have long memories (going back two generations at least) of antagonism towards another family group?  Is there a reason that some couples sit only on the north side of the church and others sit on the south side of the church?

 

Whenever we bring in a new pastor, a new music director, a new youth minister or leader of the RCIA, we must ask, “What kind of people skills do they actually bring with them?” Will they be able to bring people to cooperate with them? Will they be useful to the functioning of the parish?

 

A parish is not a religious service station where you get your religious ‘services’ done. I t is a living, breathing community of people who share in their belief in Jesus Christ and share in their calling to live as disciples of Jesus. And just like our own family, we need to learn and adapt to one another.  Family life is not easy; life in a faith community is not easy either!

 

Look at your own parish. How well are you integrating the new comers (especially the new Canadians) into the life of the parish? How well are your trying to work together in harmony? Do difficulties provide an opportunity for growth or do they cause serious cracks within the community fabric? 

 

How good are your people skills?

 

 

 

 

 

 

BE PATIENT WITH YOU OWN MISTAKES

     

Several years ago we had an elderly gentleman, right around 89 years of age, move into the nursing home. It was mid-morning. As his two suitcases were being brought in he politely, but firmly, informed the care-aide that he would like his meals brought to his room.

 

Noon came. No lunch!  One o’clock. No lunch!

 

He had made a mistake! He had chosen to be wrong. He did not miss the evening meal with all the other seniors in the dinning room.

 

How terrible it would be if we never made mistakes. What a disaster it would be if from day -one of our lives our parents did not stand back and allow us to make mistakes. Real learning only happens through mistakes! 

 

This Lent bring to your prayers the mistakes you have made in your life, the mistakes our country has made and the many mistakes that are made in the world.  The repentance asked of us during Lent is not only over the evil things (and thoughts) we may have done, but also all the many mistakes we have made in this life. 

 

Give to the Lord the times when you selfishly demanded your position and deliberately did not consider the needs of your family. “You did it your way,” but oh, so selfishly! Now you can look back on that decision and take ownership of its falsity. 

 

Bring before the Lord the time you rejected the concerns shared by your 27 year old nephew about the exploitation of the garment workers in the Third World. He pointed out that we buy cheap clothing in the First World because the wages in the Third World are just above subsistence. And there are corporation owners of these manufacturing companies who are making huge profits from such poor wages. And you just brushed off your nephew! Now, you recognize your mistake!

 

The leadership of our Church were so very slow to take action in the sexual abuse scandal. Even if this happened five decades ago the mistakes have long lasting effect. Trust has been eroded. As a Church we have much to take ownership of when we tally up the neglect towards young people at the hands of clergy and the neglect of what was happening in our families. The scars of these mistakes are very much with us.

 

At the moment we must add the indifference, the lack of care, that circulates in our country in the opioid crises. People just seem to throw up their hands and Canada is only one family away from the overdose of one of their members. We are living through a season of mistakes towards our fellow citizens who struggle with addictions. 

 

And then there is the neglect of Mother Earth. Humans have used and abused her, not protecting and supporting her in her oceans, her soils and her bounteous atmosphere. A great number of our fellow citizens refuse to even hear concerns for the well-being and preservation of Mother Earth.

 

As we come to prayer during Lent we need to clutch in our hands all the mistakes and failures that we have accumulated. We must ask for the courage to take responsibility for the mistakes we have made.

 

And we seek that the Lord will redeem our mistakes through forgiveness and courage to learn and move on into our future with better decisions and actions in our lives.

 

WHAT DO WE SEE IN COLD WEATHER?

         

Fr. Joe, who was pastor of a smaller set of parishes on the Western side of the province shared an insight that brings a smile to your face. He was the passenger of the man who owned and operated the local tire shop. There on the pavement were the tire tracks of a set of tires. Fr. Joe pointed this out: “Now, isn’t that terrible?”

 

The owner of the tire shop (his income depends on tire sales) calmly responded: “No, not so bad!”

 

What you see always depends on where you are standing!

 

We are now into ten solid days of brutally cold weather. Everyone will tell you that they check the weather forecast several times a day when the thermometer is as low as it is today. But what do we see from the vantage point of an artic wind that will freeze exposed flesh in a couple of minutes?

 

People mention the men who have to work outside, such as the men who service the oil rigs, the farmers who are out with their cattle, the toe-truck drivers and all people in the police service. No one mentions these workers when the weather is pleasant.

 

Often mention is made of the elderly and shut-ins who will spend today and every day during this cold snap, alone. You can sense that these concerned individuals are getting into the shoes of the lonely, the isolated and the shut-ins.  There are serious concerns about the mental health of our seniors in our long term care homes. With all the lockdowns they miss the human contact and support the that only close friends and family members can bring. People ask, “Who gives grandpa a hug like his twin eight-year-old granddaughters can hug Grandpa?”

 

We look at the absence that so many of our families experience when they can only have a very limited number of family members come to the funerals of their loved ones. We have families who have to invite some of the grandchildren, but not others (there is no more room). There are no gatherings after the funeral to share and support one another with stories and memories of the loved one. Funerals and/or leave takings are a painful season. 

 

The unemployed too often have such empty days. How do you keep your spirits up when you are looking forward to ten more weeks of this inactivity? And what of our students working from home who struggle to pay attention to the Zoom lecture but have no one with whom to share this learning time? Where is the human touch in this semester?

 

When we go over this list we recognize that when times are manageable and going well, we seldom even think about these people and their struggles.

 

There is blessing in this week of brutally cold weather. We see the struggles of others that we   walk by in the good weather. 

 

This week of freezing cold weather places us in a different place to observe the world. The strong ray of sunshine in this cold weather is not outside. It is what is happening within us as we see the light to look towards the sufferings and isolation of others. 

 

 

A SPIRITUALITY FOR SURVIVAL

 

There has been a strong concern on my mind for many years that we Christians need to develop a spirituality of compassion; a spiritual approach that embraces the goodness of all creation and that seeks to promoted the inherent dignity of every human being. Simply put, we need a spirituality of deep compassion.

 

Contrary to the expectation of many religious people (of all the different religions of the world) our spirituality is never something that has been worked out in a set form that will last forever. Spirituality is not like a stone building (i.e, the pyramids in Egypt) that have stood solid for over four thousand years. Rather spirituality is a program (like the therapy after you have hip surgery) that enables to thrive and live well.

 

Spirituality is our listening to God in our lives (global and personal), being embraced by the Word of God, growing in prayer and spiritual practices and lived out in concrete details in our daily lives. Spirituality is found as much in our actions as in our prayers and teachings.

 

Two streams of spirituality are coming together in our Christian experience. There is much room to cooperate with other world religions (which is a first possibility in the history of world religions). 

 

The first is the strong theology we have developed to promote and protect the dignity of all human beings. There is a strong call for our societies to respond to all humans with a consistent ethic of life. The full dignity of every human being must be supported, protected and nourished from conception until natural death. 

 

Paralleling this concern for human life is the concern to preserve the earth. We must protect all forms of life (from the bacteria, to all birds and fish and to human beings). Global warming is a reality and we humans can change this threatening collapse of the ecosystems. 

 

Pope Francis has clearly outlined in the encyclical, “Laudato si,” that both streams must be brought together. How humans treat the earth (extracting its minerals and cutting down its forests) is also how we treat human beings (the neglect of the millions of poor people on this globe). The correct attitude is to be concerned with both streams. 

 

Christianity has the power within its soil (its origins) to develop a spirituality of compassion towards our future survival. Human beings cannot continue to abuse the earth and neglect its peoples. To continue to do what we are doing can only lead to collapse. 

 

As we try to move into a new culture, a different approach to the earth, we need to be rooted in a strong religious (i.e., spiritual) tradition. Religion gives people the power to continue to work towards the good for decades and centuries, even if they experience little success or change. A spirituality of compassion that is rooted in God will sustain us through some of the very rough decades ahead. 

 

Christianity has always has had to develop a meaningful spirituality for its own time and place.  Consider what happened after the Black Death in 1347, after the abolition of slavery in the British and American Empires in the early and mid-1800’s and after the first and second world wars. Our Christian spirituality has to recreate itself after these disasters.

 

Pope Francis may be ahead of us (i.e., humanity) but he has laid out the correct path our spirituality (Christian and non-Christian alike) must take into the coming centuries.  We must work towards a spirituality with wide open arms embracing the well-being of all human beings and supporting and protecting all of the earth.