CINCINNATI -Eleven religious communities with corporate commitments to ministering in the U.S. home missions took the first step toward collaboration and sharing resources during an October 2001 meeting in Nashville. The first-of-its-kind meeting launched a study process and the formation of subcommittees which will report back to the full committee in October 2002.

“The spirit of the meeting was very good,” according to Glenmary President Father Jerry Dorn, who cohosted the meeting with David Byers, executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on the Home Missions. As a result of the Nashville meeting, two committees have been formed: one on communicating about the home mission effort and one on ministry formation of lay people for the home missions. Glenmary Father Wil Steinbacher, the associate director of the Glenmary Research Center, helped facilitate the meeting and serves with Father Jerry Dorn on the latter committee.

The charge for each committee, for the next year, is to explore its area, find out what is being done and what could be done and then report back to the full group in October 2002. “We’re walking in faith and seeing where the Spirit is leading us,” Father Steinbacher said.

“Through the communications committee, we hope to coordinate efforts to get more information out there about home mission ministry and to create awareness,” Father Steinbacher said.

Father Steinbacher said the ministry formation committee will “look at the situation of lay ministry formation for home mission ministry in the United States and, perhaps, ways we can collaborate in future formation.”
Empowering the laity for home mission leadership is an area some of the represented communities are now exploring more seriously due to the lack of ordained and vowed vocations.

Even without dwindling numbers in religious communities, Father Steinbacher said, the formation of lay leaders is something Vatican II saw as positive to the life of the Church. All Catholics, through their baptism, are called to ministry and “recognizing that call to ministry is how we approach formation of the laity—with hope and as a positive thing in the life of the church,” he said.
Committee members Father Steinbacher, Charity of Nazareth Sister Kitty Wilson, Trinitarian Brother Paul Michlalenko and David Suley of the Committee on the Home Missions, met for the first time Jan. 16-17 at Glenmary Headquarters in Cincinnati. Father Dorn and Blessed Sacrament Sister Donna Breslin were unable to attend.

Mercy Sister Amy Hoey, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops project administrator for lay ministry, and Dominican Father Wayne Cavalier were guest presenters at the Cincinnati meeting. Sister Hoey offered a national perspective on lay ministry formation while Father Cavalier shared information he has gathered while working on his doctoral thesis on lay ministry.

Glenmary’s role on the lay formation committee is a natural fit. For over 10 years, Glenmary has been a pioneer in the development of lay leaders for home mission ministry. All nine of Glenmary’s new missions in the past 10 years have been established by lay leaders.

“Glenmary has experience doing home mission work and we have something to offer the future church and home missions through the formation of laity to take roles that have previously been held by ordained or vowed men,” Father Steinbacher said. “Now we are attempting to discover how that is best done.”

Glenmary is a society of Catholic priests and brothers who, along with coworkers, serve the spiritual and material needs of people in Appalachia, the South and Southwest. Currently, Glenmary staffs 64 missions in 14 dioceses.

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