You have had a long professional life serving the church through academic institutions. What have been the threads of this service that have been consistent? My calling in life is as an educator. I am very curious about how learning happens, what good teaching entails, and how people actually change as they encounter “knowledge.” That curiosity translated into my involvement in formation for ministry especially at The Saint Paul Seminary as well as here. For the past fifteen years, I have had the privilege of working with women and men engaged in pastoral leadership who seek to develop their capacities to lead, to grow in their vocational calls, and to contribute to the on-going renewal of parish life and the church. Despite the hundreds of opinions I have about how things should work, my calling as an educator requires me to be a facilitator of learning. I love bringing committed, growth-oriented ministers together, and putting them in dialogue with bright resource people or provocative texts. I take extreme pleasure when I am witness to individuals stepping outside their defensive certainty to consider new perspectives, new points of view. Even in my consulting work with theological schools, parish staffs, community organizations, and rural community leaders, I am an educator with a responsibility to enable people to claim their capacities to think, assess, critique, and create understandings that can change the dull thud of the status quo.
You have assisted many to reflect on the practice of ministry and their leadership. What has informed your own practice of leadership? I read the literature on leadership as part of my work and of some teaching I do. It is a valuable synthesis of the science of leadership – the host of variables we can identify and track. But my best resources have been the leaders with whom I have worked. If I were to distill what they taught me, it would be a list of rather common virtues: the centrality of mission and vision, the power of trust, the indispensability of kindness and mutual respect; the value of creativity and experimentation; discontent with bureaucratic obtuseness; planning and assessment of results; risk-taking; and the teaching power of failure. Those I admire the most would be people like Fr. Kieran Nolan, OSB, former SOT·Sem dean, for his vision for possibility, Fr. Charlie Froehle, former rector of The Saint Paul Seminary, for the depth of his integrity; Mary Robinson, founder of BeFriender Ministry at the University of St. Thomas, for her tenacity around mission; Mac Warford, former seminary president and director of the Lexington Seminar, for his capacity to convene people for powerful conversations, Sr. Carol Rennie, OSB, former prioress at St. Paul’s Monastery, for her courage, and Sr. Diane Kennedy, OP, recently retired vice-president for mission at Dominican University, for her faithfulness to truth. I am a better person in so many ways because of my association with them.
Over time, how did you notice needs and pastoral concerns shift for pastoral leadership? The biggest shift for me is the loss of predictability. I grew up in an era in which communities had defined boundaries, roles were clear, expectations were uniform and enforced, authority was ascribed to people by office and not merit, and the future was not a mystery. Priests ordained even twenty-five years ago could have assumed the trajectory of their ministerial lives. Being pastor followed “the book” and while variations might happen here and there, a parish was a parish was a Interview continued on page 6
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“Creating conversation is at the heart of Conversatio because it is the root source of change and growth.”