Not sure what to do....please help

  • Thread starter Thread starter idrum677
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I

idrum677

Guest
My wife and I run the confirmation program and youth ministry in our parish…or at least I thought we did. We we hired last summer to revive a declining program. We met with the pastor- gave out vision and ideas. We were told to run the program as we saw fit and he was in agreement with out philosophy (orthodox) and our program. As expected we ran into a lot of resistance from the parents, students, etc. We are doing our best with what we have and have seen some slow changes happening with the students and we and the staff felt like we were making progress
Here is the problem. Since we started in September, the pastor has been overriding our decisions (that were run by him first) and forgetting what we agreed upon even though he made it clear at the beginning he was just going to be there for support. We also had a religious ed secratary (whom the pastor hired from his former parish). She was supposed to play a supporting role like she does with the younger grades. She barely does any of the work she is supposed to for us and spends her time working with the younger grades. To make a long story short, we do not have the authority we need to do our jobs and the pastor and secratary complain when they have to do somthing. We have been made to feel like we do nothing and that we are just wasting money.
That all came to a culmination at our staff meeting last night when Father introduced our former secratary as the new program coordinator overseeing all religious ed programs. We now report to her! Our youth ministry activies planned for December have been canceled pending a re-orginization meeting in January.
I have been completely blindsided by this and i am now completely unmotivated in my ministry. This has really been a struggle of faith for me since I have been a huge supporter of my parish and pastor. I don’t want to be a quitter but what choice do I have? I;m just going thorough the motions. Any advice would be helpful and please pray for us!!!
 
You have to leave.

You can not battle against the pastor.

Both, your pastor and you, can not send mixed signals to the youth.

Finally,

“Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say, ‘The dust of your town that clings to our feet, even that we shake off against you.’” (Luke 10:10-11)

“Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces.” (Matthew 7:6)

vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PVG.HTM

I pray for you.
 
I just want to ask what are the qualifications of the secretary/new program director? We have had some similar problems in parishes in our diocese where a new pastor brought in someone from the outside that they knew before, who do not have any qualifications and are now made to run the programs. Our diocesan religious ed. departement is looking into the situation. Perhaps you can call the diocese to find out if they have qualification requirements for rel. ed coordinator positions.
 
The marks are there, I think, that you will have to leave. You have “responsibility” but not authority. What authority you had has been taken away or undercut. Decisions are being made without your being included or even informed… I would have loved to have you in our parish when my kids were at that age. I was a convert and had learned next to nothing, and that is about what my kids got from religious ed as well. Then they dropped out. If you can find a place that welcomes you, I hope you will take it. We really need you. God bless.
 
The writting does appear to be on the wall that we should resign and that seems to be where God is leading me as well. Do we do it now or finish out our commitment to confirmation in April. I’d feel like a quitter, not only to myself, but to the kids and the wonderful chatechists we brought in. I’m very involved in the music ministry as well as our daughter is in the school. I don’t plan on leaving the parish so that also complicates this decision.
 
I was thinking you had to resign before I finished the first post. I don’t have the details, so this is just a gut feeling; but I’d probably eat some humble pie and stay until confirmation. Let the new director direct and do your best for the sake of the confirmands.

What would, for me, be the difficult part is to be straight with the Pastor and new director that you intend to leave after this class is confirmed and why, while at the same time being a team player. They deserve to know that giving someone responsibility without authority dooms any endeavor. They deserve to know that you have pretty good idea why this is a declining program. How to inform them of this in a charitable manner and keep working for them always seems to elude me.
 
It looks like you need to have a meeting with your priest. Basically tell him what you wrote down here. Let him know you understand that he is in charge but would like to know why things changed without atleast letting you know beforehand, why.

Let him know that it bred hurt feelings and mistrust in those that you work with. Ask to please be very clear in his explanation so that you can work past it.

Personally I wouldn’t stand for any vague answers because that would make me resentful. But it really depends on how you want to go about this.
 
Perhaps one of the excellent, experienced DREs here can give you sage advice.

As a volunteer, I can suggest you obtain a copy of your Diocese’s Confirmation guidelines. These should be the starting point for the Confirmation program.

Follow up every conversation with an email confirmation of what was discussed and decided upon. And PRAY!
 
Well, you do not say specifically what the parents were upset about or what decisions the pastor countered. That might give clues to the sudden turnabout of the situation.

This is a lesson to be learned if you plan to pursue working for another parish-- often pastors and church administrators are not good personnel managers.

Some of the things you list could have been avoided by insisting on written job descriptions, an organizationl chart showing you as the manager over the secretary and her job description delineating duties, and a written contract for yourselves (employment terms, span of control, budget, etc). You say the pastor said to “run the program as you see fit” but was that ever communicated to you in writing or to the parents verbally so they understood who was in charge?

I would also have suggested creating a clear vision/mission for the Confirmation program and a curriculum outline that was shared in a public meeting with the parents, parish council, etc. Communication and collaboration are key to a successful youth ministry program too.

If a parish has employees and no objective performance measures and annual appraisal system you are asking for employees such as the secretary who doesn’t do their assigned job.

Seriously, most of this sounds like poor personnel management. But, since you don’t say what upset the apple cart it’s hard to tell what else may have been motivating the pastor.

Move on and take what you have learned here with you to your next job. Just because it’s a church, don’t run on wishes and rainbows-- find a parish that takes personnel management seriously… and read up on it yourselves, find some HR books especially if you’ll have anyone reporting to you.
 
you have just been effectively fired, in public, in the worst possible way a pastor could have chosen to do it. Leave.

in your next parish, and I hope you pursue this ministry to which you have been called, cover your bases first.
a confirmation and/or HS CCD and/or youth ministry program should be set up according to diocesan guidelines, and with regard to confirmation, according to particular canon law of the diocese. No DRE or youth minister or volunteer is free to come up with their own program outside those parameters. With regard to sacramental preparation, no one is allowed to impose requirements that are not part of canon law–general law of the Church as interpreted in particular law of the diocese.

for instance, the requirements for sponsors are canon law and cannot be changed. age for confirmation is set by canon law (7 to 18) but the bishop sets the age for his diocese, and that cannot be waived except for certain exceptions, with his approval.

the requirement on retreats, service hours, CCD attendance, curriculum guidelines, are set by the diocese.

get your ducks in a row, get whatever YM training is offered in your diocese, and learn what is out there in the way of curriculum materials.

this is probably the most difficult ministry in the whole CCD/RCIA world but if you are truly called to it, I hope you persist, you are needed. general advice for anyone who assumes a leadership role in this field: look good on wood.
 
Whenever there is a “failure to communicate”, it helps to hear both sides of the story.

So far, I have read yours, and I would only note that there was not a whole lot of information given as to what exactly happened.

Having had to mediate any number of issues between parties, it has been my experience that when I listened to one party and "got the story’. and then listened to the other party and “got the story”, what I had were two stories which sounded unrelated. That is, one person gave me their view of the facts; the other gave me their version, and the two versions sounded totally unrelated, as if they had happened at different times to different people.

Frankly, I don’t know what to tell you except that it appears that there was a massive breakdown in communications if there ever was any communication to begin with.

Most massive breakdowns in communications seem to source the problem in the very beginning; one party assumes that the other party agrees with what is being said, and no such agreement exists.

It would appear that if you and the pastor were on the same page at the beginning, then something went awry fairly early on. My guess, from what is said, is that the parents had some seriously different ideas about what was or was not required, or what the course was about, or how it would be conducted, or some other major issue; that the issue came up early and was widespread, and that the pastor appears to have taken sides with the parents.

I say appears, because I do not know if there were any communications between you and the pastor as issues were heating up; and if there were, I don’t know how those communications went.

And if there were not, then I have to wondeer, when you started walking into the buzz saw, why you were not speaking to the pastor to get his guidance and response as to how to deal with the problems.

Someone in charge of a program should be able to deal with a minor issue, or with a couple of parents who may not be comfortable with something.

When a major source of disagreement is arising, that person should realize that a) they are not the pastor and do not call the shots; b) the priest has to deal with all of the people, and if they are mad enough, he is going to resolve the problem most likely in a way the leader may not like; and c) if the fact that a program was being proposed that would be fairly different than what had gone on before, there very likely might be people who would not buy in, and d) what preparation would be made if and when they did not buy in.

It sounds like you did not do the prep work from the standpoint of the parents buying in. If that is the fact, then that is probably what bit you. It is simply a fact of life that if one comes along and stirs the pot and the pot boils over, if one is not the chief cook, one will not be stirring the pot much longer.

And that fact of life has little or nothing to do with whether or not the program being presented was orthodox, or whether it was orthodox and the previous one was not. It is simply a fact of life. If someone else is the chief cook, then if you want to change the recipe, you need to do it in a way that the pot doesn’t boil over, or you won’t be cooking.

It may be that you were presenting a wonderful program, and what had gone on previously was not wonderful. Or it may be something else entirely. If you plan to do this anywhere else, then you need to seriously pick apart what actually happened, in a dispassionate manner (hard to do when you have been kicked in the teeth, admittedly) so that you don’t repeat the same problem. And you may want to get someone else who is dispassionate about the issues herein and a fairly good analyst to help you pick this apart, as you are somewhat close to the issue.

I would caution you to do so. It is easy to hurl epithets about this, to lay blame by using lables, and to see this as the orthodox vesus (put your own label here). Epithets don’t do much more, however, than attempt to lay blame with everyone else, and it has been my experience that there is never a fight but that there are at least two parties - by which I mean that blame is usually not located only in one corner or only to one side.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top