I learned that at Aquinas
Last Sunday I facilitated a meeting of the adults who work with the teens at my parish. Our Teen Ministers are wonderful people with a multitude of gifts, but so many people, as you can imagine, often clash over how things should go for the teens.
I felt it was important to work to bring the group together. I expressed the importance of the goal to model the Black Catholic Christian response to the Lord’s call to love one another and teach the Gospel. I wanted to focus on HUES, which stands for Healing, Unity, Evangelization and Service. I made that up myself.
I invited our Associate Pastor to join us because he is also an elder of the church and he is very wise and calm and I felt like we needed a calming presence to counter the more passionate emotions that might erupt in the meeting. However, those emotions did not take hold because I set the tone early with some gathering music.
As we read scripture that spoke of our many gifts and many parts of one body, I felt compelled to go around the room and ask everyone to share just one gift they felt they brought to the ministry. Each person shared a gift and only one person said she could not think of one. Even the Associate Pastor and I shared a gift with the group.
The beautiful part was that we realized that each person shared something unique and different. I was even able to share a gift that I saw in the lady who could not think of a gift, as well as sharing a gift on behalf of one person who left the meeting early.
I summarized all of the gifts that were shared and I looked around the room and saw smiles as we celebrated the giftedness sitting around the table. It was the first time I felt like we were all on the same page.
In a meeting today, the Associate Pastor had very positive things to say about the meeting and he said that he especially liked the part when I asked people to share their gifts with the group and he commented that he wondered where I learned that, so I answered his question…I learned it at school. I learned it at Aquinas.
It is amazing how much I have learned in less than two full semesters. I have learned so much that I could write an entire blog entry on just that (and perhaps I will when I have writer’s block). The main point is that I am using what I am learning. My parish is benefitting from what I am learning. I know how blessed I am for what I am receiving and I return to my church family to empty myself of that knowledge.
This is one of the best experiences of my life and I am so glad to be able to share it with others.
God bless you…