Collaboration key for parishes, speaker says
By Debra Porto
Correspondent
Good leadership is collaboration. That was the thrust of Benedictine Sister Mary Benet McKinney’s keynote presentation at the Sharing Wisdom: A Group Process for Decision Making workshop Sept. 7 in the St. John Neumann Pastoral Center, Piscataway. The seminar, sponsored by the diocesan Office Parish Leadership Formation, was geared toward parish councils and drew representatives from 18 parishes. "The responsibility of the Church belongs to the baptized, not just to the ordained," Sister Mary Benet said. "Especially at this juncture in our history when we are having a lot of scandal and trouble around the ordained, it’s doubly important that we recognize our role as the baptized."She added, "Ministry is not just leading, it’s about ministry. You can’t do ministry if you have not developed your own personal spirituality. In fact, the quality of your ministry is determined by the quality of your spirituality."Sister Mary Benet is a management consultant for Church systems and author of the book Sharing Wisdom. She holds a doctorate degree in ministry from St. Mary of the Lake College in Mundelein, Ill., and has taught in Notre Dame University and the University of San Francisco. After discussing spirituality as a base from which to draw ideas, Sister Mary Benet talked of her model of Church leadership. "I realized that the parliamentary procedure didn’t fit the Church because you come out with winners and losers, and that didn’t sound like Gospel to me," she said. "So I developed a discerning model. However, people get scared of the word discerning, so I called it a ‘Shared Wisdom’ model. It is out of that model that I teach how to be a leader, how to be a parish counselor, staff person, etc." Then she spoke on the skills necessary to support the model such as the listening skills, the willingness to share, and the willingness to help a consensus rather than block it.
Her goal, she explained, is to get people in touch with their call as ministers, their recognition of the importance of spirituality in their call, and then live it out as a parish leader.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law