The following story first appeared in the Spring 2006 Home Mission News

Glenmary Spearheading New Effort to Train Lay Leaders
for Mission Dioceses in the United States

Glenmary and seven other religious institutes have joined with the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat on Home Missions and the Catholic Church Extension Society to form a new Home Mission Leadership Conference (HMLC). A top priority of this new collaborative effort will be recruiting and training lay ecclesial leaders for home mission dioceses.

This marks the fulfillment of a longtime dream of Father Wil Steinbacher, Glenmary’s point person for home mission leadership. He has been looking for a way to ensure that Glenmary’s approach to home mission ministry and its experience of working with lay leaders can be put to the service of the larger Church.

Father Wil, working closely with David Byers and David Suley of the U.S. Bishops’ Secretariat on Home Missions, got the ball rolling for the HMLC when he hosted a meeting in October 2001 of religious communities who have a corporate commitment to home mission ministry. Participants in this gathering defined two areas for possible collaboration: increasing awareness of the home missions and developing lay leadership in mission dioceses.

That group, which began meeting annually, has now evolved into the new Home Mission Leadership Conference. The eight religious institutes currently participating include: Glenmary Home Missioners, Josephites, Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity, Our Lady of Victory Mission Sisters, Sacred Heart Fathers and Brothers, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Southern Province Dominicans and Ursuline Sisters of Mount St. Joseph.

A top priority for HMLC is its Collaborative Ministry Development Initiative. A taskforce charged with implementing this initiative met in January in Nashville. Taskforce members hope their desire for lay ecclesial training for the home missions can become a part of the Southern Province Dominicans’ Congar Institute for Ministry Development based in San Antonio. Dominican Father Wayne Cavalier, the director of this institute, is a member of the taskforce.

Taskforce members see their next step as identification of members in each community who can help with various aspects of lay ministry training as well as assist in filling unmet needs in mission dioceses. Father Wayne is creating a questionnaire to aid this process, drawing upon a recent document of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat on the Laity (Coworkers in the Vineyard of the Lord) to list various roles for lay ministers in mission dioceses.

What has become apparent since 2001, says Father Wil, is that each religious institute in the Home Mission Leadership Conference has come to understand that formation of lay leaders is an essential part of home mission ministry today.