Leaders’ Day – March 15, 2008

Leaders from Boston area Anglo, Haitian, Nigerian, and Ugandan prayer groups met at the Espousal Center in Waltham. They represented about 15% of the Archdiocesan charismatic prayer groups.

The intention of CRSB Leaders’ Days is to build a foundation for leadership by starting with essential gifts and training needed to lead a group. Today’s theme was The Importance of Encouragement for Leaders. Here is a report on the day interspersed with pictures of the proceedings.

We began the day with praise and worship.

Then we engaged in a group cooperation exercize called: ‘helium sticks’. Two groups of people competed to put their stick down, only to see it float higher in the air. Cooperation isn’t always easy!

Next Vin told us about his recent trip to Brazil and highlighted 4 experiences:

1.         The active role of the charismatic laity in the Brazilian Church

Vin met people from several lay charismatic groups who had formed consecrated communities where some people lived together in community and others had regular weekly prayer groups that supported the specific call and gift of the community ministry. One community expressed its ministry as the charism of the arts. They took in street children and taught them how to play instruments, dance and sing. They hope to give them self esteem, love of the arts and training for work in life as well as growth in their faith. Another community ministered to young street boys by providing shelter, food and clothing for them as well as trying to teach them a trade.

2.         The cooperation between dedicated lay ministries and the clerical Church

Inner city parishes had asked leaders of the community of arts ministry to send a team to minister in their parishes to provide music for liturgies and visit those who needed comfort. It was clear that both the clerical and lay church mutually respected and supported the other as they worked cooperatively to further the Church’s outreach and mission.

3.         The vision of the Brazilian Charismatic Leadership

Vin & Alvaro met with Marcos, the leader of the National Charismatic Renewal in Brazil. Marcos told them that the renewal in Brazil had been in decline until the national leadership began to see the local prayer groups as missionary communities planted by the Holy Spirit to serve their local communities. Once they saw the purpose of the prayer groups in this new way they began to encourage local prayer group leadership to teach and train their communities for outreach and begin to minister outside the prayer group. Those that participated in this grew and became strong and vital.

4.         Ministry from Brazil to USA of IPTV (on demand programs over the internet seen on the computer.)

Vin met a priest in Brazil who is pioneering giving teaching through the medium of the computer. The priest, Fr. Eduardo, envisions a Catholic library where good solid Catholic teaching can be made available to anyone in the world in the language the best suits them. Fr. Eduardo has volunteered to assist CRS Boston to pioneer using this technology to provide good Catholic teaching in the USA. We have already begun responding to this call to a deeper ministry of teaching.

Ministry of Encouragement

Before lunch Vin presided over group discussion to identify what qualities a good leader needs. The list we came up with was: Patience, empowerment, knowledge, service, vision, love, consistency, unity and discernment. Perhaps you can easily add others.

Seeing love as a fundamental quality a leader needs we discussed ways to show love. Our list was: compassion, patience, understanding, forgiveness, self-sacrifice, caring, endurance, touch, smiles reflect back encourage, affirmation, sharing and acceptance.

Next we did an exercise to identify what several scriptures had in common in which Jesus ministered to others. Many good answers were offered. Among the answers we saw that encouragement was a fundamental way Jesus expressed love, and a necessary quality for leaders to develop in order to help those they serve.

After lunch we broke into groups to answer questions about who encouraged us in our lives and what affect it had on us and who discouraged us and what affect it had on us. We also discussed what ways we could be encouraging to others and discussed specific instances of what we would do in difficult ministerial situations. Finally, we shared our list which appears below

Ways to Use the Gift of Encouraging Others

 

·    Personal invitation – delegate

·   Accept people as they are

·    Fasting

·    Recognize a good job – positive reinforcement

·    Forgiveness

·    Equipping the person

·    Love one another

·    Help people dream

·    Be a good listener (ask – seek - knock)

·    Touch people

·    Witnessing

·    Help discern the gifts

·    Persistence

·    Mentoring – knowledge sharing

·    Give people permission to exercise their gift

·    Volunteer time with the person

·    Look for a way to make it happen –
positive attitude toward accomplishment

Making the Day Real

We asked everyone to review the list and choose from 1 or 2 things they can concretely do to be more encouraging to those in their prayer group and others as well. Next month we will begin the meeting by talking about our experience with the gift of encouragement. We’ll discuss what we noticed when we were encouraging and what did we notice when we weren’t!