For the past two years, a committee of Glenmary priests, brothers and coworkers has been working to create a five-year plan for Glenmary. The goal: to ensure continuation of Glenmary’s home mission ministry despite an aging membership and few new vocations to priesthood or brotherhood. The committee was assisted in its work by data provided by the Glenmary Research Center.

“Being part of the process gave me hope for the future of the church,” says Eleanor Henley, pastoral associate in Crossett, Ark., and one of the 11 coworkers who, together with 14 Glenmary priests and brothers, made up the planning taskforce.

“Everyone deferred to each other’s area of knowledge and experience,” she says. The process involved a lot of listening and compromise before decisions were made—many of which affected certain members of the group very personally.”

The Good News

The final plan formulated by the committee and presented to Glenmary leadership last fall isn’t the plan expected when the process was launched over two years ago and called “regional concentration.”

Instead of “concentrating,” this plan calls for a reorganization of present personnel to support expansion into new mission territory while attempting to maintain commitments in areas not yet ready to be turned back to local dioceses.

“As our taskforce studied and discussed and prayed, we surprised ourselves,” says Glenmary president Father Jerry Dorn. “We may be a little grayer than we used to be, but we are just as ready to tackle home mission challenges as was our founder when he started out in 1939 with far fewer personnel and resources than we can count on now.”

The plan builds on a model of home mission ministry which Glenmary has pioneered over the past 10 years—using the gifts of lay people to establish new mission churches and nurture existing ones as Glenmarians move into senior member status.

Since receiving the final document last fall, members of Glenmary’s executive council have been in contact with the bishops of affected dioceses to discuss the plan’s implications. In May Glenmary leadership established a timeline and concrete action steps for implementing this new home mission ministry plan.

But, as Glenmary president Father Jerry Dorn keeps emphasizing, nothing is set in stone: “Over the course of a five-year plan, many circumstances can change, causing reevaluations and readjustments along the way.”

But the plan is an exciting blueprint for the future, he insists, calling for Glenmary to expand into new areas in Appalachia, the South and Southwest—areas selected according to greatest missionary need—as Glenmary defines missionary need: a lack of an effective Catholic presence; a poverty rate twice the national average; a high percentage of unclaimed; and a significant multicultural presence.

A map using these four criteria was created by the Glenmary Research Center to facilitate the planning process.

The Sad News

The new plan also means that some Glenmary missions will be turned back to respective dioceses so that Glenmary missioners can move on to areas of greater missionary need. Glenmary’s charism calls for missioners to go into counties, establish the church, nurture a parish to maturity and then return the parish to the local diocese for continued care.

No area ever wants to see Glenmary leave, says Liz Dudas of Glenmary’s Department of Pastoral Services. One of her jobs is to assist parishes as they transition from Glenmary care back to the local diocese.

But, says Father Jerry, “This is the life of a missionary. We plant a church, invite new members, nurture their understanding of the baptismal call to be missionary, assist them in reaching out in service to the surrounding county—and then we begin to think about moving on and starting all over again!”

The greatest impact of the new plan will be felt in 2003, says vice-president Father Dan Dorsey. He served on the three-member commission appointed to design and facilitate the planning process.

The only steps to be implemented in 2002 involve turning back one mission (Sylvania, Ga.) in the Diocese of Savannah and two missions, Andrews and Robbinsville, N.C., in the Diocese of Charlotte. These coincide with Sylvania pastor Father Ed Gorny and Andrews and Robbinsville pastor Father Bob Bond moving into senior member status later this summer.

Building on Success

One of the tasks of the strategic planning process was to target areas that Glenmary should consider for missionary expansion. Several counties in the Diocese of Raleigh, N. C., have been identified as meeting Glenmary’s criteria for determining a high level of missionary need—as well as fitting in with Glenmary’s organizational ability to support missioners in the field.

New missionary counties for possible expansion have also been identified in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia. In all cases the exact dates and details for entering new territory are still to be finalized.

For over 10 years Glenmary has used the gifts of lay coworkers to meet the spiritual and material needs of Mission Land, USA. Today, Glenmary has nine pastoral coordinators leading mission churches in Tennessee, Virginia, Mississippi and Kentucky. Four out of five of these missions were originally established by lay leaders, and four are currently in the second generation of lay leadership.

“We have wonderful, experienced lay leaders,” Father Jerry says. “Pastoral coordinators, assisted by sacramental ministers, are establishing an effective Catholic presence in a growing number of rural counties.”

That doesn’t mean, however, that Glenmary’s only focus for the future is on recruiting qualified lay leaders. Vocation ministry was set as the highest priority by Glenmary’s last General Chapter. And Father Steve Pawelk, Glenmary’s vocation director, is working hard to make sure young men of diverse cultural backgrounds consider Glenmary as they discern vocations to priesthood or brotherhood.

“Bringing the Good News to rural America isn’t the responsibility of just one group,” Father Jerry says. “We all, as baptized Catholics, have a call to be evangelizers, spreading God’s word and doing God’s work.” And it’s through working together that we can accomplish the most, he adds.

“It’s going to be an exciting implementation,” Father Jerry says of Glenmary’s new plan. “We’ve entered the 21st century with the same goal Father Bishop had in the last century: to bring a missionary ministry to rural America through Word, sacrament and service—in order to build up the Kingdom of God here at home.”