 My name is Chris Bergwald. Welcome to this session. I think it was was Alex pointed out how fitting it is that a workshop on relational administration and accompaniment is in the flexibility room. I don't know if you noticed that but this is this is so that was a great point. I'm glad you pointed that out. We'll give you the prayer. I'll introduce myself, talk a little bit about the Dawson Officials track and how we do our workshops for those of you who are new to the track or just just popping into this workshop and then we'll go from there. So let's begin the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Come Holy Spirit, teach us to pray. Heavenly Father, we give you thanks and praise for the gift of this day, for the gift of our faith, for the gifts of your Son and your spirit in our lives, for they thank you in a particular way for the gift of this conference which we might be fed and nourished by the power of your spirit through your Son. Pray that you would give us wisdom and courage as we seek to grow as catechists, as leaders, give us the knowledge we need to lead others closer to you. We pray for those we work for, our priests and our bishops. We pray for those we work with, our colleagues and we pray for those that we lead, may we bear fruit according to your will. And we give you all glory and honor as we pray, glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen. The name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. So again, my name is Chris Berger. Welcome, come on in and welcome to the session on Relational Administration and Accompaniment in Dossus and Ministry. So to be really clear, frankly, I know that not everybody in the room is in Dossus and Ministry. You don't need to be in Dossus and Ministry for this workshop or any of the workshops in the Dossus and Officials track. So I just want to make you know that you are most welcome whatever your role is. The Dossus and Officials track is a little bit different from some of the other tracks in that we really want to take advantage of the collective wisdom that's in the room in our workshops. Certainly, I'll be presenting some things, my own insights from my own experience for how to effectively do relational administration, how to do accompaniment in the context of Dossus and Ministry, but part of the value to me of this track, Kenakor and I are the co-coordinators as some of you may know, and when Bill Keimig and Petrock invited us to help out with this track, I love the vision that they had of not so much the stage and the stage approach, but the wisdom of people who are involved in the ministry. Now, I know some of you might be thinking, well, I'm brand new, I'm looking for the wisdom, but there's plenty of wisdom in this room. I mean, many people who have been here many times, we've got decades of experience, I just know already in this room. So the approach that we take is presentation with a lot of discussion in most of our workshops. Ladies, there's plenty of room right up front. Don't be shy. So as we go through today's workshop, other workshops, sometimes there might be a little bit more teaching and presenting, but today's in particular going to give an opportunity for you all to visit with those around you, share some of the insights in your own experiences. I work for the Diocese of Sioux Falls in South Dakota, South Dakota, rural state. There was an article I saw in one of our local news outlets a few weeks ago. We are projected by 2030 to cross a million people. Some of you are like, I live in a town of a million people. So my ministry is definitely in a rural context. I've been with the Diocese of Sioux Falls for 21 years. My title, current title is Director of Discipleship Formation. Director of Discipleship Formation. Most of my time has been adult formation, but we had a reorganization with the new bishop from St. Paul Minneapolis about three years ago, and we did a little bit of a reorg. So Discipleship Formation is my area of responsibility, working with all aspects of how to grow as missionary disciples. What we're going to be doing in this particular workshop is looking at how in the context of administrative work, Diocese in particular, but really it applies to any role which is heavily administrative, how would you do that in a relational way? How do I enter into an authentic sense of accompaniment when I might be described by myself or colleagues or people in the field as a desk jockey, a paper pusher, a bureaucrat. Meetings all day, responding to emails, phone calls. Sometimes we joke in our office. We're trying to always clarify and maybe correct or improve the way that we work. Sometimes I feel like I'm a professional memo writer because I'm on email all the time. Is this really what the people of God and the Diocese of Falls are paying me to do? So what does that look like to do the work of catechetical administration in a relational way, in accompaniment way, and not be frankly burdened or burnt out? That's kind of what we're going to be talking about. But the way I want to begin as we often do, especially the first workshop, and again, you're free to come and go in the Dassen officials' track. If there's another one that piques your interest, you're welcome to continue in the track or hop around. But what we like to do, especially the first one, is just go around the room. So name what diocese you're currently working for in your position, how long you've been in that position, and maybe something about the particular topic, maybe a challenge, something like that, around why you chose to come to this workshop on relational administration. And we'll start. Thank you. My name is Mari Paz Ramos. I'm from the diocese of Reno. I'm the director of the Office of Ethnic Ministries. I work mostly with the Hispanic community. We have a huge Filipino community too, a small Korean community. And with our Korean community, we share ministry with the diocese of Sacramento, which is probably 180 miles afar from Reno. The diocese of Sacramento has, I don't know if it's too much information, has a national parish, Korean parish. So they do the ministry with our Korean community as an outreach ministry for us, which we are so grateful for that. And so what's the challenge? I think the challenge is we have, also I work with the Asian and Pacific Islanders. And they represent a very small portion of the population and the diocese. And sometimes their concern is that they feel invisible in the parish. And in my personal opinion with when a community is not embraced as a whole, sometimes they are invisible. And so I think that's one of my challenges. And also the composition of the diocese, we have 28 parishes and distances are huge from one parish to another. Thank you. Hi, my name is Bethany Hyde. I'm with the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. I'm an administrative assistant in the Department of Catholic Education. So I work very closely with the Catholic Schools Office, the parish side of things, and Katie can speak more on our challenges. Hello, I'm Katie. Now, my name is Katie Murphy. I am also with the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. I'm actually Associate Director of Catholic Education at Children's Formation. So I'm actually more on the parish side of things, all the RE, all the children's sacraments, etc. So many challenges, a challenge that we are facing right now actually was our diocese has lowered the age of confirmation. And so we know that can be scary. Change is scary, right? And so at a diocesan level, trying to communicate with our parishes and getting them to understand, you know, how we can go for this, settling their fears that they have with the change, how they can implement this, because we do have so many, as you said, different communities that are out there and their parishes, there is no cookie cutter answer. And they want that map, that plan, just give it to me, tell me what to do, right? And then we're like, no, no, no, we got to work together here. Let's figure out this plan together, kind of a situation. So oh, and how long I've been doing this, I've kind of been in this field for a while. Bethany's kind of new, which is fantastic, because I was kind of doing everything on my own. This is actually, in my current position, this actually I'm going into my second year. But I have been in this area and other things for quite some time. I mean, in this area, field of work for gosh, over 10 years. So anyways, okay, anybody want to be next? So I'm Andrea Slavin. Three years ago, I was hired as the director for catechesis and the diocese of Syracuse. Last year, our chancery underwent some changes in restructuring. So now I am the director of child and family catechesis. And so some of the challenges that we're facing, first of all, at a diocesan level with our new team approach that we're doing with our new restructuring, I'm looking at relational ministry to start there because we really need to develop a lot of trust with one another as we work together collaboratively in parishes. And there's a lot of baggage from history to get through with the way we're working together. So trust is one of the big things with our office. And then the other thing is our diocese is really we're in chapter 11 right now, and we're working through remediation process right now, which will probably have a huge effect on how our parishes will be structured. I think there's going to be a lot of sell-offs and changes in how parishes are going to be merging together. So again, bringing trust among parishes, and they have to be able to see the trust in the diocesan officials to start with. My name is Liliana Soda Cabrera. I'm the coordinator of faith formation for the diocese of Palm Beach. Our office, we work as a team, our director, as director of marriage, family life, faith formation, and youth and young adult ministry. So I'm the faith formation side of that, dealing with religious education and also the RCA. And relational ministry, we have started going out to the field, going to the parishes, working one-on-one with our DREs and RCA directors. So it's been beautiful to see being out there in the field, being out there in the trenches. So the reason why I chose this workshop is to, you know, for more insight on how to continue with that relational ministry. Hi, I'm Kelly Reynolds. I'm new in a new office that was created in the Archdiocese of Baltimore just under two years ago. We're called the Office of Parish Renewal. And my colleague Becky and I are parish renewal specialists, which we feel very special. It's like, what are we doing today? One of the things that we're doing is accompanying pastors and helping them better coordinate with their staffs, especially pastors in our city parishes that have no staffs, it's mostly lay volunteers. And also, I think we've done a pretty good job of learning and teaching others in our Chancery office how to accompany each other better. So we're really breaking down silos at the Archdiocese. And I'm Becky Cayman, all of that. And just the building trust also with pastors, and there's just a lot of distrust from experiences in the past. And especially right now, we have a city initiative going on that will ultimately end in the closing of some parishes. And so much of that in the past has been done without consultation. And so trying to help people to see that like, we're actually listening this time is really, really tough. I'm going to stay seated. My name is Tracy Smith, and I'm an intern with the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, looking toward a degree. Is it not on? Oh, is it? Is it there? Okay, sorry. So I'm Tracy Smith, and I'm an intern with the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, looking toward a degree in pastoral counseling, and I love discipleships. So I'm soaking in all I can get there. So I appreciate it. Hello, my name is Shane Cincinnati. I'm the managing director for parish evangelization. So I'm on the best team in Cincinnati. And our job is to travel around the whole Archdiocese, accompanying our parish evangelist. So that's your DREs, youth ministers, RCA coordinators, anybody in ministry. And biggest challenge facing us right now is we are one year into five years of a parish amalgamation process, going from 209 to 57. That was great. That's how we feel every day. Not really. I love it. My name is Liz Sands, and I am from the Diocese of Raleigh. I spent about 18 years in parish ministry and youth ministry predominantly. About a year ago, this gentleman here approached me and said, would you ever come work for the Diocese? And I said, no, multiple times in July and August and September. And then, look, here I am. So we work on a team in the office of evangelization and discipleship. And we basically support the people that are in faith formation roles in parishes. And so coming alongside them, I love my job description, actually talks about spiritual accompaniment, as well as, you know, help that resources or help people restructure or redo. We are very fortunate. We're in a very growing area. So I think one of our biggest struggles is we have a really big diocese and geographically, and then the population is booming. And so keeping up with that is, I'm sorry, but you were Debbie Downer. I had to bring them back up. My name is Patrick Ginty, also from the Diocese of Raleigh, and I only hire people that are better than me. That's why I was very persistent. I've been in this role for five years. And what I was hoping to get out of this was simply just to hear what everyone else is doing, you know, to hear different models, see how you're helping folks in the parishes, especially, and hoping to learn from everyone. My name is Joel Page. I'm the Diocese and Director of the Office of Catechesis for the Diocese of Evansville in southwestern Indiana, just started my third year in this role. And the reason why I'm here for this workshop is, say, the relational ministry aspect has probably been one of my guiding principles in coming into the role. As you're going, I'm a Josephine Fablay from the Diocese of Oakland, just two years now, so getting into my third year and doing this as a coordinator of youth and young adults. And, you know, there's just a lot of the projects that the Bishop will give our Faith Formation Evangelization Department, like last year with Senate stuff, this year's Eucharistic Revival, and I'm sure a lot of you are planning for, you know, Year of Hope. So there's a lot of that stuff on top of, you know, doing, you know, parish coaching for the youth and young adult leaders, helping different clusters of parish, getting the young adult ministry started. Some two of the initiatives are really trying to coach the youth ministers on and train their, form their teams in, is pastoral accompaniment of their catechesis or their teams, and charismatic formation, and so really trying to prioritize those two. And then that sparked a lot of good conversations and groups within the parishes. Is this someone new? She's awesome. Yeah, well if you say so. Scarlett Salavaria, six months on a job in the diocese, and the prior years are worked in parish from several years. I'm not going to say how many, but enough to know that, yes, working in the diocese is a whole different experience. And just what everybody shared here in the diocese of Oakland, we're going through, you know, Chapter 11, all those changes. And I think my challenge right now is, yes, I know what our catechists need out there. I know what our parishes are needing, but then I'm getting familiar with what the agenda of bishop has, and they're in the diocese. It's two different things. So how do I manage that? That's why I'm here. Hey everyone, my name is Daniel McCormick. I'm the Director of Realist Education for Birmingham in Alabama. Here with my colleague Alex, we work on the same team in evangelization and faith formation. I think I've been doing my job for seven years now. So I'm not the most senior person here, but I've been there the longest in that office. But I love it. I love working for the PCLs for the catechists, mainly on the parish side. What I think the problem I would like to kind of turn over with everybody is breaking down some of the walls of division that exists between our clergy and lay leaders. I think that we have good relationships and trust, and we have lots of good initiatives that we can work on with lay leaders in the parishes, but that's often invisible to our clergy. And that can be the case with DREs and the parish themselves, not always having an interface with their pastor, but just hearing what some of your solutions have done. Thank you. Alex Kubik, also Diocese of Birmingham. My role is the Director of Discipleship and Mission, which was a job description I wrote in an office I opened six years ago. So one of the challenges is nobody knows what that means. And so all of the large like USCCB and national projects and events and synods and all those kinds of projects that nobody knows what to do with come to me. So that way they think they kind of have an idea of what I do all day. I also inherited campus ministry and young adults a year after I started, which is great because it's a great area of ministry in which to use principles of missionary discipleship. And the kind of the flow seems to go that way, but it does make it hard to kind of have a very, very wide purview of ministry. And similar to Daniel, I would say we have great relationships with the people we serve who are in the ministry work. But in addition, I think to those walls maybe that we have with clergy that also extends to the curia and the chancery, like our team is this beautiful, wonderful, supportive ministry minded team inside of a chancery that kind of conceives of itself as an accounting department. And so there's a lot of difficulties in getting the work done internally, whereas we're fine outside the office. So totally different experience to you, Chris, of being a desk jockey. Like, I'm at my desk very little because I can't get any work done there. So, yeah. Good morning. This is Diana Pizarro, diocese of Rockville Center, Long Island, New York. We have a long, yes, territory. And so we have 133 parishes. I've been in the office for 10 years now, and I began as associate director, office of information for the needs of the Spanish speaking community. And that been changing through the years, probably the first five years I was helping the community. We were six associate in the office. Now, you know, we are in the club of restructuring and chapter 11. So now we are two instead of six and out of 12, now we are four. And we are trying to do as much as we can with my dear colleague next to me. And we love what we do. We are helping the categorical leaders in our diocese and our parishes, supporting and helping with resources. But yes, we have many challenges, especially because the restructure is not done. And sometimes we hear, oh, there is something new here, or we are eliminating these and now we're putting these. And we graciously trying to be there to continue the mission. I'm Lisa Robistelli. I'm the other associate director of the diocese of Rockville Center Long Island. You welcome rally. All of our people move down to you guys. Where are you really? I've been in this position four years in ministry 18 years now. I started off for children's formation and now we just do whatever is asked of us if it's formative of any nature. So we just do it all. We're the only office with any interaction with the parishes. So we support all parishes in whatever they ask us to do. And whatever new idea the bishop comes up with, we come up with a plan five minutes later. Our job right now is really to build relationships after a lot of hurt. So we're just trying to gain the trust of the people, the trust of the clergy, just to gain just to have that sense of relationship and help people fall in love with the church again because there's so much anger, so much bitterness out there. Our job is really just to kind of get people to fall in love with the church honestly. Hi, my name is Tess Austin and I'm also from the Diocese of Rockville Center. I am the director of Catholic Identity and Mission for the Education Department. So I work with the superintendent and the bishop to support and build up Catholic identity in our schools. I think we're also navigating chapter 11. So I think there's a lot of fear and principles of, you know, as my school going to make it and there definitely was a time when there was a lot of school closings. Gratefully we haven't closed any schools in the past couple years since we've done a lot of restructuring of the education office, including the creation of my position. So this is my third year on the job. And one of the challenges I think is a lot of the times we get young teachers who are right out of college and they put in a year, maybe two, and then they go off to public school. So it's like, how do we really form our teachers to not only just teach the subject areas but really see their job as evangelization. I think there's very few teachers that get, you know, even if there is a set religion teacher, like my job as a math teacher is still to evangelize as well. But oftentimes they're not really with this long enough. So that's kind of some of the challenges. But we do have a lot of signs of hope, too, in the diocese and in the education world. So thank you. Claire Bondi from the Diocese of London in Ontario. And we, my role as director of late ecclesial ministry and ongoing formation, so supporting the pastoral ministers and youth ministers in our diocese, and then providing formation opportunities for all of our staff. I think our biggest challenge, I'll let, I mean, we've just fully activated into families of parishes last year over a five-year period from, I don't even know, how many parishes do we have? 120 to 31. So yeah, there's lots of challenges that have come with that in the midst of COVID, which also created its own problems. But I think if I were to name one of our primary challenges is, it's, is perished by in to what we're offering from a diocesan level. So. Oh, this way. Sorry. That's okay. I'm going to stand back here so I'm not like my backs to anybody. Marina from the Diocese of Reno. I've been in this role as director of faith formation for not even a year yet. So I'm so excited to be with all of you wonderful people. I've been in education, though, for about 20 years, split it in half public and parish. So it's Mari Paz in ethnic ministries up at the front. There's myself. And then we have David Wollums, who's not here. He's going to World Youth Day. He's our young adult. So there's three of us in our office for the diocese of Reno. That's it for that formation part. So that's my challenge. And that's what I was so excited about coming here. This is one of my initiatives when I got brought on. You need to bring Catechetical Institute to the diocese of Reno. So it's been like my my homework for the last, like, seven and a half months. And so I'm here and we're going to bring it to the diocese in September. So, yeah. Hi, I'm Chris Sandra. I am with the diocese of London in Ontario. I'm the pastoral services coordinator, which just means I do whatever Joe tells me to do. And I've been in this role for two years. I came from a campus ministry background at a university. And so in campus ministry, relational ministry means like there are students at my door who want to talk to me all day, every day. And now I work in a diocese and center and no one wants to talk to me ever. Hi, I'm Christine Coyle. I work for the Diocese of London. Joe, this is Joe. And I'm a family youth specialist, family youth, young adult specialist for one year. And I was a youth minister for 20. So yeah, it's really different. So personally, the challenge is wrapping my head around working for a diocese instead of a parish. Chris Sandra has been a big help reminding me that. And then the other challenges, I have all these great ideas, but nobody wants to do them or send anybody to them. Like, so it's like, how do I, you know, get them to love my ideas and bring them people to them? So it's me. So I'm Joe. And I've got a wonderful group of people around me. Now, because Cassandra says, I do whatever she does, whatever I tell her. The truth is, the truth is she directs me and keeps me grounded and realistic goals. So my role is I'm the director of pastoral services. The line in the job application that best describes what I do is all other duties as a sign. And, and it's been fun. It's it's been exciting. We've done a lot. We mentioned moving into family of parishes, which was a lot of work. And now that I think the challenge is going to be to convince them that that's just a vehicle. You know, when you go on a plane ride, you don't spend a lot of time talking about the type of airplane you were on unless something bad happens. Of course, you might want to mention it, but you don't talk about the way you got there. You talk about the destination. So where the challenge is to get them to understand that the reason we're doing this is so that we can be a mission oriented diocese that creates disciples for Jesus. That's where we are right now. Did I miss anything? No. Okay. Six years ago. Holly Peterson and the diocese of Columbus. And I'm on the job for a whopping two weeks. Yeah, I'm the assistant superintendent of Catholic schools. And I'm just moved here from Colorado, where I've been a principal and been an education Catholic education my whole life. So yeah, so I guess the maybe not challenge, but the grace blessing and a little bit of a challenge we have is our governor just passed the state of Ohio, the voucher system, basically a choice, which allows Catholic education for free education, basically to anyone who wants or a sliding scale of education of payments. So how do we keep our schools Catholic with this influx of students? So we are far from, you know, chapter one, we are like our schools aren't big enough and we're just full. So thanks, Peter God. So there. I'm Audrey. I'm also an archdiocese Cincinnati. So Shane is my managing director. I am the associate director for youth evangelization. So on the parish support team, I focus specifically on youth, youth parish evangelists or youth ministers or dearies. I am two and a half months into this job. So like Shane, I'm out in the field just meeting one on one with our parish evangelist coaching, training, equipping them to move from like a classroom model of ministry to a relational model of ministry, which is why I wanted to be in here this morning. Yeah. Good morning. Erica will come from the archdiocese Los Angeles. You know, we've been at the diocese for three years. I had a different title of the last three years every year, the last three years. But this one, my final destination was the chief of mission in Catholic identity for the department of Catholic schools. We have about 206 elementary schools, 50 high schools, over 8000 square miles of the diocese serving four million Catholics in the region. So that's one of the challenges. We were down four bishops and just found out today we got appointed four new bishops today. So we're very excited for that. But my role similar to colleague over here is to make sure our schools remain Catholic. With a diocese as large as ours, we celebrate best in 40 languages every Sunday. And with that comes the perspectives of 40 different countries and perspectives of how Catholics should be. So my goal is my charge is to try to keep us all unified and forming our diocesan staff, our department of Catholic school staff. My biggest challenges are HR and legal. So there you go. My name is Father Jacob Cother. I'm from the Diocese of Victoria in Texas. I've been a priest for eight years, a pastor for five. And last year I was also made, additionally made, the Episcopal Vicar for evangelization and catechesis. And that's new. So one of my challenges is that like somebody else mentioned, I don't know what that means. And so I got to try to figure it out. But one thing is that I'm the supervisor for the office of Catholic schools, youth and young adult ministry, catechetical ministry, family life and Hispanic ministry. But those are offices of like one or two people. So my goal is to try to vision for them and to show them that the work that they're doing is all, it can be done together. And so how can we move away from silos and just doing our own thing or competing to where we can work to work together and support parishes? So that's me. Good morning. My name is Deacon Tony Clisham. I'm with the Diocese of Juliette in Illinois. We stole a guide that he was from his diocese. Yeah, he's got the job that his predecessor had. But I work in the Department of Catechesis and Evangelization in the Diocese of Juliette. My job is Office of Catechetical Formation Lead. So I oversee the DREs and support them throughout the diocese. We have 117 parishes. When I took the job and looked at the job description, it basically after a restructure, and really we just started, really this department started from scratch. It was a complete restructure. But my job description read, within the first three months, you will create and implement a Catechis certification and ongoing formation program. And I knew about Catechetical Institute. I didn't know it well, but I knew of it and had a sense that this may be the path for us that best aligned with our bishop's vision, which is Catechize, evangelize, put faith into action. And indeed, it really does support our bishop's mission. And my challenge is nothing short of go make disciples, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. That's our challenge, right? To the ends of the earth. Okay. Sorry. Great. Good morning. My name is Eric Peterson. I'm the Director of Parish Catechesis for the Archdiocese of St. Paul in Minneapolis. So for those of you who are in Chapter 11, it does get better eventually. We're kind of notorious for being one of the big ones that was in the news all the time for being in Chapter 11. But we're finally out of Chapter 11 and it slowly has gotten a lot better. But I feel your pain for those of you who are in it. It was a tough time. We were in Chapter 11 for almost six years by the time we got through it. But there are wonderful things happening as well. So again, as I said, I'm the Director of the Department of Parish Catechesis. I've been with the Archdiocese now. It'll be 15 years in September. I spent the first 11 or so of those years on the school side. I worked in Catholic Identity Teacher Formation, Principal Formation, helping with student formation, offering up those opportunities. And then an opportunity came along when we switched to a new Archbishop. The question still became, we need more someone in working in Parish Catechesis. But as before me, there were this many people working in Parish Catechesis in the Archdiocese of St. Paul Minneapolis with 185 parishes and over 35,000 young people in those things. So I said, I guess I said yes to that. And I guess one of the challenges is when people say, what's the Department of Parish Catechesis? I raise my hand and I'm it for those 185 parishes and been promised for two years in a row that I'd get an associate director. But that's kind of always fallen off the budget right at the last second, the last two years. So which leads to sort of the other challenge of how do you develop relational ministry with 185 parishes and that many people when you can't physically be everywhere. Even if I wanted to go to every single place, it would take me the entire year. If I spent one every day, you try to get it together in denaries or vicarious models to try to talk to people and do that. So that's a big challenge. And the other challenge that I think that we face oftentimes, and maybe in other places too, is sort of this healthy balance between subsidiarity and some level of standardization. And because of the fact that there was no one doing this for well over a dozen years, the diocese that kind of became a bit of a wild west. And so people of good will, people who I love very much still are very resistant to any sort of things from the diocese because they see that as an imposition on their ministry. And so it becomes, it's a bit of a challenge. I formed sort of an advisory council to work on that. So it's not just me with the ideas or the ideas, but it does become a bit of a challenge for people who don't want to be told they have to do something. And that cuts across all stripes of things. So trying to kind of break through some of those things. We've been slowly getting a little more successful, but it's still a bit of a challenge to work on that when they say, well, the diocese says, so therefore it must be bad to have to do that. So we can't have to deal with some of that. So working on it. Cool. I'm Brian Flynn, Diocese of Lansing, Michigan. I am in the office of parish youth discipleship. I've been in catechesis and youth ministry for about 25 or 27 years actually, but in the diocesan position for seven years. And basically my job is to support all the people in the parish setting who do any form of youth discipleship from religious education, catechesis of the good shepherd, youth ministry, scouting, anything in the parish setting. And I would say the biggest challenge we have right now is we are called to serve canonical administrators. That's on our operating norms, it's posted all over our chancery. And there are fewer and fewer of those people to serve. So we're technically not supposed to do the ministry from the diocese level, but there are fewer people in the parishes who are doing the ministry to actually support. So that's kind of discouraging. That's a big challenge. And I'm here just to hear how you guys are achieving relational ministry with people who are only there about two years and then the door shuts and a new person comes in. So thank you, Ryan. And thanks, everybody. I know some of you were just making notes as we were going around. We really want to encourage you during meals, the other diocesan official's events, like the breakfast tomorrow morning and so on, to connect and network with one another. If you especially heard somebody who's in a similar role or facing a similar challenge, the purpose of this conference, especially for diocesan leaders, is to take advantage of that wisdom that you all have to learn from one another as we're doing. So I wanted to offer a few thoughts sort of both personally, not in terms of me, but how we, just as individuals as disciples ourselves, deal with the challenges of diocesan administration, doing that relationally in an accompaniment mode, and then what that accompaniment can look like more externally, as you all talked about. Many of you talked about the challenge. So Eric, because I know Eric, I'm using his example, I'm one person with 100 and some 180, 85 parishes. How do I, I see the importance of accompaniment and relational ministry, but in a practical way, how can I do that? So just to offer a few thoughts, and I do, I'm going to give you some time, just have a discussion in smaller groups to continue the conversation that we just began, making sure that we're done by noon. A couple of things as you were going around, that the issue of trust, many of you raised that trust that can be internal, some of you voiced that, trying to build trust within the team, but then especially trust with pastors, clergy in general, parish, catechetical leaders, and so on. Just an encouragement to keep at it. Many of you have probably, have probably familiar with the work of Patrick Lencioni, the amazing parish, which he is one of the founding members of, in a leadership team, trust being the foundational level. In any relational ministry, relational, you have to have trust, but how do you do that when one person, 185 parishes? Meetings all day, perhaps. How do I build that trust? That can be a challenge, but first of all, an encouragement to always prioritize that. Don't let, this is one of the things that I've seen in my own experience. The work of administration is, for many of us, very project-centric, but we have to make sure that we're always actually people-centric, that we're always prioritized. Don't let the projects get in the way of the people. And that can sound like a cliche, but 21 years in my diocese, I have to remember that over and over and over again. It's not a sign above my door, but it could be. The work of discipleship and evangelization is about people. The projects are a means to the end of forming missionary disciples. So the importance of trust and relationality. Patrick Lencioni's work in terms of leadership teams, maybe internally, but also at the parish level. And then another thing along these lines, I made a note. One of Lencioni's newer models is the working genius model. This afternoon's session is, I'll be talking about the working genius model, just as a way to collaborate. If you're part of a team, we've found this to be a really helpful model. How do we work together well as, in our case, the Office of Discipleship and Evangelization? How do we work together well so that we're fruitfully accomplishing those projects to serve the people of the diocese of Sioux Falls and all of our parishes? The other thing I wanted to mention, again, I don't mean to pick on Eric. I do all the time. I know. Subsidiarity versus standardization. I think it's a great way to name a challenge that many of us face. In our dioceses, we really encourage as much local creativity as possible. You know your people. We say who are PCLs are pastors. You know your people. You know what's the best way to reach them. But we are trying to accomplish certain specific goals. The way that we've done that is to name the outcome and allow local creativity and how best to get there. So our approach, generally speaking, is not to mandate the means but to name the goal and encourage local creativity on the best way to achieve that goal. And then somebody said something earlier that reminded me of Reagan's line. Some of you, hi, I'm from the government. I'm here to help. You know, I'm here from the diocese or archdiocese. I'm here to help. Like, oh, thanks. Close the door. Sometimes we face that difficulty. But the fact of the matter is, although some people don't want to hear our ideas, others do come knocking. So we make ourselves available to everyone who wants help. Okay, we hear you, Bishop. We hear you, diocese and staff. We hear you, Office of Disciples of Adminization. This is the outcome. We have no idea how to get there. Can you help us? Sure. Other parishes, we're now July 5th. We also did a clustering. We went from 100 parishes to 25 pastorates. Other pastorates feel pretty confident and rightly so, good people, creative people. They feel like they have a good path on how to get to that outcome. So either way, our approach is to name, this is where Bishop wants us to go. Our diocesan vision is to foster a culture of lifelong Catholic missionary discipleship through God's love, the new evangelization, the great commission. That's where we want to go. We want everybody to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and grow in their ability to share that relationship with others. That's where we want to be. And we help name what that looks like in a more specific way, but we leave them the creativity and how best to get there. This is going to get back to the accompaniment thing that I want to talk about in a little bit. So that real tension between subsidiarity and standardization, that's one way, as Eric was sharing, that tension in the Archdiocese of St. Paul, that's one approach that we found to be really fruitful. But on sort of the personal side for us as whether ordained or lay or religious working, and those of you who are long timers will completely understand what I get at, the importance of remembering that at the heart of administration, it's literally in there the word is ministry. It is just so easy, again I'm speaking at least for myself here, to myself, to become project-centric that I have to remind myself no, at the heart of this is literally ministry. Romans chapter 12 and 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul names a number of charisms. Administration is a charism and it's a role and office within the church. Administration is not at the service of ministry, administration is ministry. So maybe sometimes as long timers we need to remember that, sometimes as new timers we have to remember that, that what I'm doing, even though I'm not directly, some of you named this right, maybe you worked in a parish role for years, decades, and now you're in an ascent role and you're more removed from real people, you know what I mean. I was doing direct ministry before but now I'm not. I mean maybe I'm out with with PCLs or other parish leaders, but I'm not engaged in direct ministry the same way I was before. That's true, you're not, but it's still ministry. And what that looks like is going to vary from diocese to diocese to role to role, but an encouragement there to remember that you, even if you are, and to clarify Alex, I don't feel like a desk jockey, but I know many times people in roles do feel that way. Even if you do at times feel like a desk jockey, a paper pusher, or a diocesan bureaucrat. No, you're not. You're a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And there's a danger. So on the one hand we can get, if you look at the curve of, if you map, before I was a theology major, I was an engineering major, so I still love math. So if you're going to graph it, if you're going to graph years of service, sorry, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, years of services on the Y axis and then number of people in diocesan ministry this way, the curve is like this. So a lot of people come to diocesan ministry either kind of directly sometimes or having been in the parish for a while. So there's a lot, but as time goes on, they leave, they leave, there's fewer and fewer. And then you'll find in this room, some people who are long timers, 10, 15, 20 plus years, kind of the curve goes back up. Why the bottoming out? For my experience, having been at this conference for many years, talked to many diocesan colleagues who just after a few years, they do, it feels like the administrative work feels burdensome and they get burnt out. And I think part of it is forgetting that we need to always have the heart of a disciple, the heart of a catechist, even if you're not in the quote unquote classroom or whatever the model is, to always have the heart of a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ and to remember that. So on the personal side, to always see the work that we're doing not as a means to the ministerial end, but as in fact a ministry in and of itself. So then in terms of external relationships in our diocese and the idea of relationality and accompaniment. Again, evangelization happens most effectively through relationships. So that's true not just externally, externally, bringing people into the church, but that's also true within the church. You all, many of you named this, you know that already. I don't think I need to convince you of the power of relationships internally within the church, let alone externally. But what does it look like internally? What does it look like to accompany parish catechetical leaders when you're three, an office of three in a diocese of 100 and some thousand in the case of Reno, 130,000, or on the other extreme four million in Los Angeles and other diocese, archdiocese of that side. How do I do relational ministry in either case? So with accompaniment for me for years, I've looked to the passage that many of us look to as the paradigm for accompaniment in the Gospels, Luke chapter 24, the road to Emmaus. And I remember years ago, I think it was for the Synod of the New Evangelization, in preparation for that Synod, Archbishop Cardinal Dolan of New York wrote an article for the Archdiocesan newspaper where he, Archbishop Cardinal Dolan, walked through all the different ways that Jesus accompanied those two disciples on the road to Emmaus. And Cardinal Dolan enumerates nine. What I'll do sometimes, the folks, is I'll just have them read Luke 24 and just count how many different ways do you see Jesus accompanying these two disciples? And there are people coming up with 12. I mean, they even add to Cardinal Dolan's list of different ways. But the thing I always point out, what's the first thing that Jesus does on the road to Emmaus to accompany those two disciples? What does he do? They're going the wrong way before that. He listens before that. There sounded like there was unanimous. Where are you guys from again? That's Gary right there. Do you say he shows up? Is that what you said? He approaches them. He approaches them. He draws near to them. He enters into the reality of their lives. Maybe, in certain contexts, into the mess of their ministry. And even today, sometimes, I used to really irk me. Sometimes it still does. But I've come to see the wisdom of the importance of listening. I used to think, okay, we have the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to proclaim the gospel of Jesus. And we do. But what I've come to see the value of listening is to have a sense of where the priest, deacon, religious, PCL, man, woman of the street, where they're at, so I can approach them in the most effective way. So the first step, the first thing that Jesus does, he doesn't stay far off. Hey, you guys, is that the electric company? I think it's the electric company. Okay. Anyway, he doesn't call to them from afar off. He approaches them even though, as some of you pointed out, they're going the wrong way. They're going the wrong way. It's the wrong time of day because it's going towards evening. They're leaving Jerusalem. We know from later, it becomes afternoon, so they're traveling towards afternoon and evening. Not a good idea in the Holy Land where there's no street lights to light the way. But Jesus accompanies them nonetheless. He draws near to them and then all the things that we see, he listens to them. Let's just, I have a reason I want to walk through this briefly. He listens to them, then what does he do? He asks questions, then what does he do? He calls them fools. He rebukes them. No, this is where, talking to officers and officials, we have to be very careful. But this is to me, how do I accompany, so some of you named realities similar to what I have in mind here, how do I accompany somebody who at the parish level is quote unquote going the wrong way? How do I help them? Because authentic accompaniment, accompaniment can be really misused in all sorts of ways. As Carter Dolan also said in that same column, accompaniment is not aimless, wandering in the dark. Accompaniment is always about leading them closer to Jesus Christ. Now in the case Jesus was right there, but he prompted them ultimately to return to the Church of the Apostles in Jerusalem. For us, not literally being Jesus, accompaniment is always about leading them, even though we might have to accompany them as they're going the wrong way. It's about getting them to return to Jesus and his body, the Church. What does it look like when somebody in a whatever parish is in leadership is going the wrong way? And I don't mean egregious ways. I mean just their approach to ministry is not fruitful. Maybe it's not aligned appropriately with the Bishop's vision, Archbishop's vision. How do we handle that situation? Well there are times when we do have to call them to account, but we can do that when it's in the context of trust and relationship. Fraternal correction is one of the spiritual works of mercy, but it's always done in the context of a relationship. So having the relationship, however that might come about, the challenges that we face, having that relationship gives us the space, the ability to, not in Jesus' words, you fool, but provide some accountability, a fraternal rebuke, a fraternal correction, if you will, to help them maybe hopefully change course and go back the way they're supposed to be going. We see Jesus do all sorts of other things. Then he opens the scriptures to them. Of course, he reveals himself to them in the breaking of the bread, the invitation, the return of the sacraments. I really love the road to Emmaus as just that paradigm for accompanying it, but especially for us in the context of diocesan ministry, we really, IA, we, our department, looks to the road to Emmaus as a paradigm for how we can relate with parish Kedakitaka leaders and our clergy as well. So one of the things, and I'm just going to invite any of you to share briefly how you do this, but especially with COVID, we started doing things, many of you in the room, many of us started things like regular Zoom meetings. We couldn't get out. We couldn't go to our people, but we could Zoom with our people with all the faults, but we do regular meetings with our PCLs on Zoom. We have retreats on occasion. We have at least one annual gathering day, where we're trying to do, akin to what we're doing here. It's not just top down, it's also peer-to-peer to give them an opportunity to grow and network from one another. Okay, so I'm going to wrap up so that some of you, I know that probably after you have probably maybe you get to one of the lunches, some conversation on the way out, but want to thank you for coming to this workshop. Again, many of our workshops in our track will be dialogical. You'll see a lot of, how do I work with priests? How do I work for a bishop? How do I collaborate with others like our working genius presentation this afternoon? Really want to encourage you to take advantage of the wisdom that you've heard from one another. Thank you guys for coming. Let's go to the prayer. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. Take care.