Rising to the call
Glenmary, partnering with Loyola University and mission dioceses, is helping ‘amazingly
talented and good people’ become effective lay ministers in northeast Mississippi.
by Christine Grote

On Aug. 20, 1950, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Father William Howard Bishop, the founder of Glenmary Home Missioners, wrote in his diary, “I have started working on sample prayer services that can be conducted by trained laymen or women in out-of-the-way places where there are small groups of Catholics the priest can’t reach on Sundays…I hope they will produce results in keeping up devotion beyond the range of Mass.”

LAY MINISTERS: Fifteen people from northeastern Mississippi recently completed the LIMEX program. Many are exploring ministry opportunities in diocesan parishes and Glenmary missions. Photo/Courtesy Galen Holley, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

On May 11, 2008, in New Orleans, La., a group of 15 lay persons from northeast Mississippi, graduated from Loyola University through the LIMEX (Loyola Institute for Ministry EXtension) program with a master’s degree or a certificate in religious education or pastoral studies.

How are the 1950 diary entry and the 2008 graduation connected?

Glenmary has recognized a need for lay leadership in the Church in the United States since as early as 1950. By 1989 Glenmary had begun developing the current lay pastoral coordinator program. That same year 10 people from Glenmary missions in Morehead, and Owingsville, Ky., graduated from the LIMEX program, which enabled them to take leadership roles in Glenmary missions and diocesan parishes.

“We had creative people back then who were willing to envision new models of lay leadership,” says Glenmary Father Tim Murphy, pastor of St. Christopher mission in Pontotoc, Miss., and sacramental minister at St. Luke the Evangelist mission in nearby Bruce. Under the Glenmary model, a lay pastoral coordinator, who is installed by the local bishop as the pastoral leader of a parish, works with a priest who serves as the sacramental minister.

Presently Glenmary has seven lay pastoral coordinators who lead eight missions.

According to CARA (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate) data, the number of parishes in this country without a resident pastor has steadily increased from 3 percent in 1965 to 17 percent in 2007.

If this trend continues, Father Tim explains, more trained lay ministers will be needed. It’s a need Catholics in northeast Mississippi know well and are responding to. “All I can say is ‘Thanks be to God,’” Father Tim says, “We have just had amazingly talented and good people respond.”

Father Tim celebrates Mass every first and third Sunday of the month at St. Luke in Bruce. On the other Sundays, Sister Mary Jean Morris, the pastoral coordinator, leads a Word and Communion service according to the norms outlined by the U.S. bishops in Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest.

Sister Mary Jean says that it’s hard for people to believe there are parishes in the United States that do not have Mass every Sunday. “I think most people who have never experienced [a priestless parish] are both frightened and amazed.”

St. Luke is one of eight Glenmary missions in northeast Mississippi and in the Diocese of Jackson, a diocese where priests have been stretched thin for many years. The diocese recently conducted a study to determine what plans parishes had in place in the event that they no longer had a resident pastor.

Susan Sweet, pastoral associate of Glenmary’s St. Francis of Assisi mission in Aberdeen wrote in response, “We’ve been doing this for years.” Mass is only celebrated at St. Francis every other week.

LAY LEADERS: Sister Mary Jean Morris, pastoral coordinator of Glenmary’s Bruce, Miss., mission, leads a Word and Communion service. Sister Mary Jean is facilitating a LIMEX group in Bruce that has eight students and Glenmary is helping subsidize the tuition for students in Glenmary missions who need assistance. Photo/Jean Bach

About five years ago, Father Henry Shelton, then pastor of St. James Church in Tupelo, began looking for a way to educate lay ministers for his parish. But there were obstacles. Mississippi doesn’t have a Catholic university and the closest lay ministry training program was three hours away.

Then he learned about LIMEX which offers on-site education. Students complete assignments and then come together weekly to view video lectures by Loyola faculty and discuss the course materials with an instructor certified by Loyola. In addition to this trained facilitator, Loyola requires both a local and an organizational sponsor for the program.

“It sounded like it fit hand in glove with what I needed,” Father Shelton says.

Father Tim, then pastor in Aberdeen, also knew about the program as he had recently hired Susan Sweet, a LIMEX graduate. “LIMEX is a very reputable program and has met with much success across the country,” he says. Father Tim joined forces with Father Shelton and Father Bob Dalton, then director of Glenmary’s Lay Ministry Program, to begin a LIMEX class in Tupelo.

Father Shelton’s parish, St. James, agreed to be the local sponsor and provide the meeting rooms, resources and video equipment. Glenmary agreed to become the organizational sponsor which required authorizing and ensuring the integrity of the program. Susan Sweet agreed to be the group’s facilitator. Now all they needed were students.

“Within three months we had 20 people ready to commit to the program,” Father Shelton says.

“The Loyola program is a very good adult education model,” says Father Bob. It is not purely academic but it makes the students appropriate what they learn into their own life experience. “It’s a living theology,” adds Father Shelton.

Father Tim says the program is ideal because “you need a way to do really thorough, very fine theological training for people who are simply, because of work and families, unable to travel.”

The group in Tupelo has finished the four-year program and graduated 15 people in May. Susan says many of the graduates have been involved in various kinds of ministry for years and “getting a degree or studying through the Loyola program has validated all the work they’ve been doing.”

Vonda Keon, one of the graduates and director of religious education at Glenmary’s mission in Bruce, says the program “just affirmed for me the really good things about the Catholic Church.”

Father Tim gives the students “an immense amount of credit” for not only desiring the training, but completing it with confidence and competence. “They are not only committed lay ministers,” he says, “they are very effective lay ministers.”

The Loyola program has taken root in northeast Mississippi and is growing. Bishop Joseph Latino of the Jackson diocese has approved the program for use on the diocesan level and the diocese will provide organizational sponsorship for future groups.

Through the program, Sister Mary Jean says, “Loyola is joining forces with Glenmary, the Jackson diocese and other dioceses across the country to help educate people for the next generation in religious leadership.”

Father Shelton credits the groundwork done by Glenmary over the last decades in northeast Mississippi for the response from the lay people. “That’s what Glenmary does,” he says. “They go into rural areas where the faith is small in terms of numbers and call these people to a new understanding of what the Church is and what their role is in the Church.”

As a seminary student during Vatican II, Father Shelton says he was “trained with the understanding of the Church as the people of God.” It has been an “awesome privilege and challenge to empower the laity and to call them forth to a new understanding of who they are by virtue of their baptism and confirmation.”

Fifty years ago Father Bishop began looking to the laity to help lead the Church. Today increasing numbers of lay people are rising to the call. And while lay ministry “is not the total answer to the ministry needs of the future,” Father Bob says, “it’s still a beautiful response of a lot of people.”

For more information about Glenmary's lay ministry program, visit the Department of Pastoral Ministers and Pastoral Services home page or contact them at dps@glenmary.org.