Leadership Planning Retreat

A Critical Question, A New Direction, and A Way to Operate as a Team

September 8–10, 2014

Capturing key reflections and emerging questions from the Leadership Planning Retreat during my time as Auxiliary Provinical, centered on how a rapidly changing world is reshaping our mission, identity, and way of working together. It outlines both the realities we face and the new directions we are called to explore as we move forward as a Lasallian community.

The Question

To what extent has the universe that surrounds and calls us changed dramatically, making it difficult for us to keep up with it, to engage it, and to use it to benefit our mission?

The Universe

1. Migration of the Brother’s role in school has become more affirming, supportive, spiritual, and board-focused, and less front office leader, head of department, full-time classroom teacher, and coach.

2. Lasallians, like so many others in our society, mature slower and live longer than ever before in history.

   • First half of life (degrees, position, family, promotion)

   • Pre-adulthood extends into the thirties

   • Adulthood I from the 30s to 55

   • Second half of life (making sense of the first half, inner life, balance)

   • Adulthood II from 55 to the late 70s

   • Elderhood: being fully active in the 80s, with a short period at the end of life for transition (e.g., Mother Teresa, John XXIII, Jimmy Carter, etc.)

3. Group attitude change, as 56% of our FSCs are over 70 years. Youthful energy for classroom and school is much less prevalent among our group. More people are in Adulthood II and Elderhood, doing some inner work and becoming more spiritual.

4. Mission belongs to every Christian, not just religious, as before Vatican II.

5. Traditional mission is more and more in the hands of capable partners who need lots of help carrying it on. Great achievement of formation programs (LLI, Buttimer, LSJI, etc.), but only a small percentage of the whole have graduated to date.

6. “Be a Brother, Doctor, Astronaut” has much less appeal these days in favor of “help prepare young adults in Kenya to teach in their village” or “assist Doctors Without Borders in stemming an epidemic.”

7. Transitions of all types have left us with more and more room for others in our communities.

All these describe the created world we are called to love, embrace, and make our “New Normal.” The “Old Normal” is gone forever. It’s been an earthquake in slow motion without preparation. We are like the crowd in the desert for 40 years, watching their members die and wishing they could go back to Egypt. There is no going back (“regressive restoration of persona,” Rohr). Endarkenment rather than enlightenment.

New directions or moves beyond our borders while in the dark:

1. All-out effort to fill our communities by going beyond our borders to find ready, willing, and able Lasallians. If more partners—especially young professionals—were to join our DENA communities in the next three years, would the mission benefit? Would it advance the Lasallian vocation? Would it help men realize their Brother vocation? For this purpose, what specific experiences, training, and formation are needed to ensure success?

2. Broaden our understanding of mission beyond the traditional roles in schools and institutions; that is, commitment to the poor and disenfranchised wherever they may be; ministry of presence; spiritual care for adults, etc. “Broaden” is not “replace,” but rather a bigger picture.

The charism remains, but the apostolic works may change according to needs. “An institute should be creative and always seek new paths.” — Alvaro

The Formation Guide says:

“Formation continues beyond retirement to a new availability for service in the Mission. The Mission does not end at the age of retirement. Those in charge of formation invite those retiring to continue to share their experience and their witness.”
Formation for the Lasallian Mission

3. Prepare Brothers and other Lasallians for Adulthood II so that they might be fully in ministry in their 80s—a different ministry than at 55.
   What formation needs to be available to them in Adulthood I in preparation for Adulthood II? What new understanding of our mission beyond youth can be delineated for those in Adulthood II? Other districts interested?

4. Expand recruitment efforts for the Brother vocation in Adulthood I to complement our efforts in pre-adulthood.

5. Push the LV program to recruit a larger number of young people to work in our mission and live in our communities at home and abroad. We can offer connections, encouragement, and formation to the LV staff now that they are fully a program of the conference.

The International Assembly of Young Brothers called for:

“more possibilities of international collaboration…, especially in the areas of volunteer movements, formation of new teachers, and Lasallian encounters.”
— August 6 CAP letter to communities

6. Future Dream
   To welcome, recognize, and affirm a process for members of our district to come up with creative ideas to improve our ways of mission; our DENA services; ways of relating to other districts; our public image, etc.
   This might be achieved by inviting willing members to meet together in small groups to come up with one idea they believe would improve our district. It is important that provincial team members not attend. Ideas would be presented to ………. for possible implementation.

7. PR campaign to put forth the extraordinary stories of our members who have served in deeply troubled areas of the world, and to clear the way for those reading the stories to do similarly.

8. What might be the role for Lasallian Elders who have the age, insight, spirituality, wisdom, and gifts to assist us with directions in the dark?

9. Encourage schools and institutions to take on a public persona that might attract Adulthood I recruits for the Brother’s vocation. We have several Cristo Rey schools that call themselves “the school that works.” Why not “the school that will change the world?”

“Always remember we are not defined by our deficiencies or what is missing. We are defined by our gifts and what is present.”
— Community, by Peter Block

Ed on how we operate as a team

1. Getting the smell of sheep on our hands. Let’s leave our routine, schedule, office, and life as we know it during the coming year to spend two weeks on one of the peripheries. Let’s invite a few Lasallians in Adulthood II to accompany us. Many of them have the time and deeply need the experience. Let’s hire someone to do our job while we are away.

“We travel from our comfort zone to a place of new possibilities… sometimes scary. Jesus invited his disciples to leave the coziness of the cenacle and journey past the threshold of that locked room to a world awaiting them. That same call is ours today. We are being called to go beyond not only our community and District borders, but also beyond our personal borders.”
— August 6 CAP letter to communities

“…I believe that the corporate image that we have today as an institute is not one of service to the poor. We have certainly made effort, but for the most part we are far from the ideal that we have proposed—that this be the rule and not the exception.”
— Alvaro, A Song of Hope

We are groaning with Paul to bring about a new creation.

Thanks for the chance to formulate a question, a new direction, and a way to operate.