JOY BULOSAN AND DARA PERREIRA

Winds of change

From March 29 through April 1, we attended the Convocation for the National Association of Church Personnel Administrators (NACPA) in Oakbrook, Ill., a suburb of Chicago.

The theme of this year’s convocation was “Winds of Change.” What an appropriate theme in these changing times — our economy facing a recession, people facing unemployment, our investment portfolios facing a downturn.

In her welcome message to the group, Sister Joyce Soukup, SSJ, NACPA president, said that change reshapes and redefines every institution within the church and society. History reminds us that the rough road of change is smoother when church leadership is both courageous and faith-driven. NACPA continues to stand for justice in the workplace, for both employees and the church, in the good times and in challenging times.

John Allen, one of the keynote speakers at the convocation, shared some very important megatrends within Catholicism and society that are turning the church upside down. Allen is a prize-winning Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and a senior analyst for National Public Radio.

One of the megatrends reported by Allen is the reality of a global church, with the numbers of Catholics increasing mainly south of the equator. Allen also foresees less separation between church and state. He focused on two different levels at which the Catholic Church is struggling to respond to the current economic crisis. At one level, the church acts as a voice of conscience, applying Catholic social teaching to broad public policy debates. On the other hand, many of our dioceses are large corporations faced with declining resources and mounting expenses.

Carol Fowler, director of personnel services for the Archdiocese of Chicago and a speaker at last year’s priests’ convocation for our diocese, said we need to take a “glass half full” perspective on the crisis.

Fowler insisted that the church’s administrative professionals are not only managers but ministers. She shared that Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George regularly asks during budget meetings, “How does everything in your budget help people come closer to Jesus Christ?”

Fowler called upon the church’s human resource officers to become more “strategic,” not simply reacting to problems as they arise, but anticipating challenges. She recommended the following:

n   Talent management — developing better methods for assessing performance.

n   Hiring — projecting gaps and needs in staffing in order to devise effective recruitment and retention strategies.

n   Succession planning — preparing for transitions in key leadership areas.

n   Retaining leadership training and development — usually the first line item that gets cut during a budget crunch.

n   Infusing faith into human resource decision-making — being mission centered.

Contemplating the overall theme of the convocation, and knowing how change can prove to be a rough road, we asked ourselves, “What is the message of these changing winds for us? What is change calling us to do?” Immediately we considered the tool with which we hope to make the rough road ahead a little smoother.

“Witness to Jesus: Diocesan Road Map for Pastoral, Program and Facility Needs 2008-2013” is the strategic plan designed by our people and developed to position the Roman Catholic Church of Hawaii to ride the “winds of change” into the future.

From a human resources perspective, the NACPA convocation shared great technical information, but more importantly it reinforced the fact that the one requirement needed to achieve the goals of any plan is dedicated people.

Whether we are employees of the church, volunteers or parishioners, we are all responsible for shaping the future of our diocese. Bishop Larry Silva asks us in his opening statement of the Road Map, “What route is God calling us to take at this time to accomplish the mission?” Take a look at the Road Map at www.catholic hawaii.org and see how you can answer this question and be part of the “winds of change” for our diocese.