Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.96 - This Parish Grew 300% Through COVID with Tim Glemkowski | Amazing Parish Leadership | Pastor Burnout Solutions | Catholic Church Renewal

Transcript

Ep.96 - This Parish Grew 300% Through COVID with Tim Glemkowski | Amazing Parish Leadership | Pastor Burnout Solutions | Catholic Church Renewal · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

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  The the attrition rates among young priests are so crazy
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  today. These are great guys who are
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  coming in with a heart for the priest and they're on fire.
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  And there's some diocese that have shared with me, like
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  anecdotally, that they're still seeing as much as a 50%
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  attrition rate in priests in the 1st 10 years of their ordination
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  in the last several years. This is Virtuous Leaders, the
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  podcast for based Catholics who will speak truth, do good, or
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  die trying. Here's the show.
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  So you're the executive director of Amazing Parish.
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  Tell us a little bit more about Amazing Parish.
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  Yes, an organization that was founded 12 years ago by two
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  businessmen, John Martin and Pat Lencioni, basically to help
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  Paris leaders, in particular pastors, lead transformation.
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  So our particular lens on that is helping them in their
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  leadership to lead through a vision for culture and
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  organizational health, which is a lot of the work our founder,
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  Pat Lencioni, has been engaged in in the corporate world.
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  And so really what we're trying to do is just come alongside
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  leaders, pastors in particular, who have a heart for the mission
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  of the church, want parishes to be not just places that are sort
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  of, you know, we open the doors and anyone who comes can come
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  and receive the sacraments and and leave, but really places
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  that are driving conversion and transformation, helping us to
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  live as Jesus and the apostles lived.
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  And so, yeah, there's a lot of different aspects of that, but
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  that's kind of the core of the mission.
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  How do you do that? I was especially curious from
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  the organizational point of view, which is at the expertise.
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  Yeah. So we, we work with, we, we kind
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  of consider it a journey through five different phases.
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  So we're trying to push a, a transformed culture, which is a
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  culture in our view of healthy teamwork, active discipleship
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  and unceasing prayer through, you know, the circles of
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  influence, right. Our, our belief is kind of that
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  transformation is not just a new program or a new initiative in
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  the, in the parish, but it's how we live that that is more
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  fitting for an Apostolic time. And so we have a coaching
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  relationship with a pastor. We're a lot of events and stuff.
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  They come to an annual summit, the pastor leadership retreat.
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  But really the goal of it is helping him to build a healthy
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  team, helping that team to transform the leadership of the
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  parish, the staff, key volunteers, key councils,
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  different things, communicate their clarity, align everything
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  around the clarity that they've come to and then begin to help
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  Catholics in the pews. You become disciples, help those
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  disciples go on mission to the world.
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  So it's really about just emphasizing that concept of
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  circle of influence and pushing transformation from the inside
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  out, which we found helps it to be more lasting.
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  That it's not just the vision of kind of 1 uniquely gifted pastor
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  and he's kind of lone wolfing at doing it as on his own, but
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  there's actually a a sense of I'm sent to the people that are
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  nearest to me to invite them into the transformation in
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  Christ that we're all trying to encounter.
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  OK, so to get more practical I wonder if you could share a
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  success story using that as a way of explaining how this
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  works. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot I
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  like. So one of the beautiful things
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  that we hear from a lot of pastors is that amazing parish
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  hasn't just helped their, you know, like you see
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  transformation their parish, but it's actually saved their
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  priesthood is what they'll say to us.
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  I think the reason is a lot of parish leaders get, you know,
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  especially the gifted ones, right?
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  Like we tend to work toward more that leading third of of pastors
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  are really hungry for this. And so an example comes to mind
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  of one of our really gifted pastors from archdiocese in the
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  Midwest who young priests. You know, he's an associate for
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  a few years of Paris and he's sent to a small kind of country
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  parish for his first assignment as a pastor.
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  And he comes in Paris is super divided, you know, the staff
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  infighting and he's very gifted like so he's, you know, kind of
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  trying to do it all on his own through his preaching, through
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  his, you know, efforts, but has no sort of context or
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  imagination for how you actually drive change management
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  organizationally throughout the entire organization.
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  So we really the first thing we do is we build a leadership team
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  with them and and that leadership team learns to
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  actually live, you know, vulnerability based trust helps
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  to have healthy conflict, helps them to actually commit to
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  results, which is a typical and parishes, you know, like we're
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  just sort of, you know, and then helps them hold the cut to other
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  accountable to those results so they can actually see them in
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  the parish of the time that leadership team takes on
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  collective accountability for the results of the entire
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  parish. And then they really go about
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  and and transform the culture of the staff, right.
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  And the and the the key leaders in the parish, They find a lot
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  of, you know, for some people that's disruptive and it's
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  something that they choose to leave, you know, maybe staff
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  over for others, they really buy in and they buy into this new
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  vision. And then they with in
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  collaboration with some other key ministries went and actually
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  really tried to, you know, reach the Catholics in the pews, which
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  a particular length with a particular lens for them on
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  marriage in the family and how to actually form healthy
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  marriages and healthy families in the parish.
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  And their parish grew like 300% through COVID, you know, so as
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  every parish is like declining and Mass intense is down 20%,
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  they were up 300%. But it's because they didn't
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  just start with that marriage and family initiative from the
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  jump. They like worked to actually
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  create the kind of organizational culture that
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  could sustain fruitfulness overtime.
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  So we hear those kind of stories all the time.
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  And how did that change how the priest uses his time?
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  Yeah, that that's a lot of it for us is a lot of priests
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  typically where they experience the most overwhelm and burnout
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  in their vocation is the unending sort of unrelenting
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  demands of like the management or CEO side of their job.
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  So in a lot of ways, it's about trying to help them delegate
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  effectively and lead effectively, like sort of really
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  live into that CEO role, which is, you know, visionary leader,
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  setting the tone, setting the agenda, teaching them the things
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  we one of our models is the things only a leader can do.
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  Teaching them to focus as much of their time as possible on
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  those things instead of, you know, getting kind of lost in
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  the administrative of the parish or, you know, everyone saying,
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  well, you know, this is what father wants or only father can
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  make that decision. Like we're trying to actually
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  teach them to lead more in that kind of CEO model with a lens
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  for right now. It's not totally corporate.
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  It's not just like we're trying to teach every parish to be a
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  start up. We're trying to teach pastors to
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  really lead the, the, the problem that we're trying to
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  address, right, is we're in a recessionary climate and
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  somebody's in the church in the United States.
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  We're seeing incredible growth in the last few years, but we're
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  still not like relative to our infrastructural footprint in the
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  church in the United States. We don't have enough priests to
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  actually staff all of these, you know, locations that we have.
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  So when you used to have 5-6 priests in a parish in an urban
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  setting who are ministering to the parish, now you have one who
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  has three parishes. And so we have to find a way to
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  help pastors lead in that. The the attrition rates among
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  young priests are so crazy today.
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  These are great guys who are coming in with a heart for the
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  priest and they're on fire. And there's some diocese that
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  have shared with me, like anecdotally, that they're still
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  seeing as much as a 50% attrition rate in priests in the
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  1st 10 years of their ordination, in the last several
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  years. The huge problem that we're not
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  really talking about enough. And you mean priest leaving the
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  priesthood? Priest leaving the priesthood
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  completely. Oh wow, that's really sad.
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  Yeah. So that's, that's what we're
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  trying to help address is there's not, nothing's going to
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  change dramatically in the structural reality of the church
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  over the next 20 years. So we have to help pastors
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  actually live in that reality in a way that's not just burning
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  them out, you know, over that period of time.
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  By the way, did you just use the word administravia?
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  Yeah. That's great.
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  OK, So what? What you're saying sounds pretty
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  common sense. What?
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  Why isn't every parish just do this?
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  Yeah, it's a good question. You know, I think it's hard,
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  right? Like it's hard to actually lead,
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  right? To make the decision to lead.
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  And I think us as men in particular, we want to say like,
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  I got it, I know what I'm doing, right?
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  And priests go to 9 years of seminary.
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  And so they're like, I know what it means to be a priest.
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  I know how to do this. And I think we tend toward sort
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  of Lone Ranger instincts. And so, you know, yeah, it's,
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  you know, I'd say most, most of the like, we have a 99%
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  retention rate for our clients, right?
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  Like once they start doing it, they're like, holy cow, I can't
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  believe I didn't find this first.
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  But doing a new thing is harder. There's resistances around.
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  Like some of these ideas are from the corporate world, quote
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  UN quote, the world of organizational health, you know,
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  like how does that work in a Catholic setting?
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  There's the objections vary, you know, but but we do find it's,
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  it's overwhelmingly helpful to priests.
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  So what? What is your current and gross
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  trajectory? Yeah.
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  So we in terms of we do a few different things, right.
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  We have an event in a conference and we expect that to grow quite
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  a bit this year, you know, probably by almost 100%.
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  Coaching has grown dramatically this year.
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  I've only been there a year. So we're seeing a lot of growth
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  this year for sure. And we're adding like one pastor
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  a week right now into coaching. So we're trying to hire coaches
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  to keep up with sort of the demand that's out there.
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  So I don't know where that all goes.
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  You know, I think at a certain point you hit a probably
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  critical mass of we really see our key audience in a particular
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  way as the innovators and early doctors.
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  What is that bells innovation curve where they talk about, you
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  know, 3% of people by temperament are innovators, 14%
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  by temperament early adopters for new ways of doing things and
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  this is a new way of doing things still in the church.
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  You know, we've been around 12 years.
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  So you know, I think that's you know, in the United States we
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  about 17,000 parishes. That's like 2800 pastors is
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  really who we're trying to reach with this.
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  And so we hope to reach all those pastors in the next
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  decade. But you know, time and God will
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  tell. What did you say is your biggest
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  challenge at this point? You know, I think that the
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  realities of the church are still like a, there's a lot of
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  things about the fruitfulness of our initiative, of our work that
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  we can't control to some degree. Like we can't control how pastor
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  assignments are done in the church still.
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  And a lot of diocese are still caught trying to plug holes.
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  And so they're shuffling priests around to just try to like, man,
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  we're almost like, are you a Lord of the Rings fan at all?
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  Yeah. You know, so the the Pellinore
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  fields, right? Like there's the outer wall that
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  Gondor retreats from in order to just defend Ministerith.
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  And as a church, sometimes we're still trying to man the outer
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  wall to a degree, like we're trying to plug every hole
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  instead of realizing what there is probably some like retreat
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  for the sake of the health of our diocese that is required.
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  And so that we get caught in that dynamic as well too, where
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  it's like, we'll, we'll have been making incredible progress
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  with the parish. And then, you know, the pastor
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  gets moved in three years. And then hopefully often what's
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  kind of amazing is a lot of those pastors will continue in
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  coaching like the new pastor at that parish because they want to
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  continue. They see the progress, the
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  momentum. But yeah, there's a lot of
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  there's, there's some things that we just can't control in
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  our in our context. And so we have to just entrust
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  those things to God to a degree. So if someone's listening to
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  this and they want this program to start their parish, what
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  should they do? Contact us on our website,
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  amazingparish.org. And yeah, if you're a layperson,
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  you know, like really what who we're going to want to talk to
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  is the pastor at the end of the day, because if he's not bought
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  in and if he doesn't want it, like it's just not going to
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  work. But you could recommend it to
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  him. You could help support him with
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  a scholarship to do this. There's like a, you know, kind
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  of a marginal cost to do some of it.
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  There's a lot of things that you could do to support your pastor
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  in in getting this work. If you just get in touch with
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  us. They're amazingparish.org.
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  Anything else you want to share with us, Tim?
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  No, that's good. I mean, that's good as far as
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  amazing parish. I mean, that's, I think this is,
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  you know, there's a broader conversation on the renewal of
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  the church, restoring all things in Christ.
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  That's like a, you know, kind of paramount in this time.
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  And so I have a million thoughts on all those different things.
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  But for our, our or to row in that work of renewal, you know,
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  which is really focusing on that healthy and effective leaders
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  and helping them get the the help and the accountability and
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  the accompaniment that they need to do that.
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  I think that's a good overview. OK, well you got you got a left
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  there on the fingers. Liz, why did you give us a
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  nugget there? What's what's your Nuggets of
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  redeeming all things in Christ? Oh, I, I just think that's like
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  the, the kind of perennial mission in front of the church
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  right now is like, you know, really the church exists so that
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  more and more people can counter the life and life to the folder
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  can only be found in Jesus. We're seeing an incredible
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  upsurge today in people who are asking those questions and open
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  to the answers that Catholicism provides.
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  But the project of renewal and reform in the church is always
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  about how do with the means of the church, like everything we
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  do as as leaders in the church, how did they more adequately
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  lend themselves to that end, that mission of the church?
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  And so I just think I'd like in some ways, to me, that's the
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  most important conversation happening in the church today is
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  like, how do we do that more frequently?
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  And that requires change and conversion, personal conversion
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  and institutional conversion. And so, yeah, I see amazing
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  parishes located within that broader, broader project, which
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  I think is sort of like, you know, in some ways that work.
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  A revival, the most important conversation in the church
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  today. Keep up the great work 10.
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  Thank you. Thanks for listening.
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  Please like, subscribe and share with your friends.
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  See you next time.