Beside every good shepherd stands his "staff". If you've ever seen a picture of a shepherd tending his flock you know what a staff is. I'm attempting a play on words to refer to my role as pastor and how essential the parish staff is for me as shepherd and for you as a member of our flock. I couldn't do "it" without them. Literally "it"...everything. We have a great team at St. Pius. I was reminded of this again this past week. Our staff (which we refer to in house as the PLT: Pastoral Leadership Team) is comprised of ten members. Our full staff meets every month for lunch and updates on how things are going in the parish and in our individual ministries. Last summer as we began to create our Restore! plan for parish renewal, I recognized that meeting every 3-4 weeks would not move us forward in a timely manner. So a group of six of us (the SLT: Senior Leadership Team) meet every Thursday morning to pray, plan, prepare and parse how we are doing. This group has been very effective in coordinating all the aspects of our Restore! plan over the past seven months. In between the full staff meetings I meet one-on-one with individual members to discuss areas of concern or to discuss their programs. If you add all this up its a lot of meetings. And I generally don't like meetings. Our goal is to make our meetings as effective as possible. We always have a typed agenda, we give frequent time checks during our meeting, we table items for future meetings, and we also decide that some discussions should be taken to "the parking lot", meaning it can be decided later by two folks without taking the time of everyone in the room. I have learned a great deal about myself and our parish staff through our meeting processes. I've discovered that honesty and openness is essential for a team to be effective. We had some honest discussion this past week that will lead to some tweaking of our meeting schedule. I also know that prayer is essential in our meetings. We begin every meeting with prayer. It keeps us grounded and focused on who is really in charge.Christ is the true shepherd, we are the flock, striving every day to do His will and build his Kingdom. So I end this posting by asking you to pray for our staff, and for me your unworthy shepherd. May we always hear the voice of the One calling us to remain close to Him always. |