• Saint Giles Update on Pastoral Transition Process anmd Brief Summary of Key Themes
• Reflections regarding Transition Process from our facilitator Dr. Kevin McClone

The Consultation Team from the Archdiocese met with the parish staff, leadership teams, and the parish at large at three separate meetings on November 17th to listen to the people of St. Giles directly as part of the pastor transition process. The Team consisted of The Most Reverend Thomas J. Paprocki, Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, Fr. Jim Donovan, Chair of the Priest’s Placement Board, and Fr. Larry Lokowski. In addition to these sessions, the Team was given a full information packet on St. Giles including the summary of the September listening sessions. The information packet given the Board along with the information that they gathered at the November 17th Meetings will be put into a packet which will be made available to all of the candidates and presented at the Pastor Fair on January 20, 2009. The Board will have a New Pastor appointed by March 1st, 2009.

Saint Giles Update and Brief Summary in Adobe Reader (pdf - 90 KB)

This past August 12th, 2008 we began the pastoral transition process by meeting with the St. Giles parish pastoral council and followed that meeting up with a two hour session with the various leaders of the many diverse ministries at St. Giles to offer some input on the dynamics of healthy transition and to share stories and reflections of what leaders value about St. Giles and what dreams and hopes they have for the future to become an even more vibrant faith community. This was then followed up by a series of listening and reflection sessions in which I met with many parishioners of St. Giles who came together on September 28, September 29th, and September 30th.

I was impressed by the warm, collaborative, and committed spirit of those who attended these sessions to share their appreciation for St. Giles many gifts that they want to continue as well as their hopes for the future.

A few observations as an outside facilitator: I felt that there was amazing consistency in the major themes that emerged which suggests a lot of common understanding in terms of major gifts of your St. Giles faith community. Below is a brief summary of the major themes that emerged from these sessions. A more detailed summary will be compiled which collates all the responses of the many listening and reflections sessions which will be passed on to the Archdiocesan representatives who will coming to St. Giles in November.

Brief Summary of Major themes after collating all comments from various group meetings:

The most mentioned items to question on what we value and want to continue were the following:

1. The appreciation of diversity in makeup of parish, types of ministries, and outreach to larger community.
2. A welcoming community that values service and outreach to poor.
3. Lots of positive valuing of education as evidenced by support for the school, catholic education, and formation for children, youth, and adults.
4. Consistent valuing of Family Mass as a viable part of parish.
5. High value on collaboration, lay leadership, and identifying people’s gifts for service to parish and larger community.
6. Strong social justice valuing.
7. Openness to discussion, new ideas and inclusiveness of everyone.

The most mentioned items to question # 2 on hopes and dreams for future were the following:

1. Continue the spirit of St. Giles in welcoming, outreach, appreciation of diversity and collaboration with a wide service to others.
2. Continue valuing education.
3. Promote more adult education programs was the items suggested most often of all the hopes for the future.
4. Become better on integration of various ministries and enhance communication among various diverse groups in the parish such as Family Mass with “the wider parish community”.
5. Foster more spiritual formation and further enhance liturgies, music, homilies, and spiritual grounding.
6. Continue to value collaboration at all levels.
7. Expand outreach and service to surrounding communities in need.
8. Continue to value and expand ministry to youth, seniors, and wider community.

I want to applaud the commitment and foresight of Fr. Tom Dore and the entire parish leadership of St. Giles who actively engaged in this meaningful pastoral transitions process.

My name is Kevin McClone, M.Div. Psy.D. and I am a clinical psychologist who teaches at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago on Collaborative Leadership Skills in Ministry. I have presented workshops and facilitated various group processes for lay and religious men and women for many years. I was honored to be invited by your pastoral council leadership to assist you in your pastoral transition process. I began by meeting back in August with the pastoral council and your pastor Fr. Tom Dore to hear about the upcoming pastoral transition and to hear about your vibrant community at St. Giles.

I would like to share a few reflections on the transition process. We all go through transitions in our life, and these changes generally bring a variety of mixed feelings, behaviors, and reactions. For many feelings of loss and grief arise as they get in touch with what those changes will mean, others may feel anxious and uncertain about what the future holds. Some will experience a mixture of joy and sadness as they reflect on gifts received and saying goodbye to persons who have touched them deeply.

Transition is indeed a part of life. We experience many transitions throughout our lives. For some it is the first child, for others going away to college, others face the retirement transition or changing jobs. Whatever the transition, we will be better off as persons and communities if we are able to face these challenges head on. It has been said that to live is to change and to live well is to have changed often.

What helps faith communities pass through such a pastoral transition in a healthy way? In my experience healthy transitioning depends on some key factors. First of all, those communities of faith that consciously prepare for such a transition are welcoming the spirit’s movement of grace and challenge that these changes bring.

William Bridges, an author of several well known books on transition states that each transition is marked by three crucial phases or threads, first there is an ending, then there is an unsettling liminal phase of in-between time and finally an ushering in of new beginnings.

In my short time spent with the pastoral leadership representative of various committees, I have been impressed by your spirit of welcoming, collaboration and commitment to consciously and deliberately enter into this transition process of growth and change.

In my experience, transition has powerful potential for creative growth when people of faith are willing to embrace the mysteries of its passage. As you prepare to go through your own pastoral transition, I will be meeting with various groups at the end of September 28-30th to help facilitate your own reflections on what you most deeply value about the St. Giles faith community and want to continue but also challenge you to reflect on what more can be done as you move forward. Your conscious and committed effort to engage in these questions now will be a concrete way that you can aid in this transition process. A summary of your thoughts, reflections, and ideas will be collated and passed on to the Archdiocesan representatives who will come to listen to your statements of who you are as a faith community.

I am honored to have been asked to assist you in this life-giving process of transition. Each one of you will be affected in different ways by this process and the feelings will more than likely be varied and mixed.

Sometimes we choose transitions in our lives and sometimes changes are thrust upon us. Either way, we are challenged to adjust to this process, paying attention to our losses and leavings while ushering in new beginnings. In between, we may find ourselves lost, anxious, and uncertain of what the future holds but as people of faith we are called to live in hope of better things to come.

Kevin McClone