Message From Our Priest: Choosing Servant Leaders
In 1995, when I was still a deacon preparing myself for my eventual ordination to the priesthood, I wrote a deacon’s prayer. A deacon, our priest-formator told us, is literally a servant (the Greek word for ‘servant’ being ‘diakonos’). Priesthood therefore must always be understood as a life of service to God and to his Church. As soon-to-become priest, I knew (and boy, was I anxious and nervous!) that I would automatically become a leader (there was no choice!) in the Church community. Being a future leader, I had to remind myself that I am first of all a servant!
Someday Soon: A Deacon’s Prayer
Someday soon,
We will become servant-leaders. We lead by serving,
And we serve by leading.
Someday soon,
We will conJnually be challenged
To build a more parJcipaJve Church.
We become a Church by parJcipaJon, And we parJcipate because we are the Church.
Someday soon,
We will be given ‘powers’.
We become powerful by sharing,
And we share because Christ has empowered each one.
As we immerse ourselves into the ministry,
May we never forget,
As you always remind us, dear Lord,
That the center is You.
Soon, we will become priests.
And someday soon,
We will always remember
That we are perpetually deacons … Your servants.
Amen.
A priest is a servant-leader and so are the many lay people devoting their time, talent and treasure to the Church. One blessing of being a parish priest is that I don’t work alone as God’s servant. God always sends fellow servant leaders for the shared responsibility of shepherding the parish.
This month, our parish will choose lay servant-leaders who will help me in running CTK pastoral activities. From March to April, our parish is having an important community exercise – the selection of the new set of leaders for our Parish Pastoral Council. The three-year term of the current PPC officers in the diocese, including ours, will all end in June.
Aware of the Diocese’s push to have a synchronized pastoral planning cycle (July to June) for all its parishes, we hope to have the new set of officers by April since they will have to participate already in the initial ministry-based pastoral planning in May. Plenary planning will be held in June. Implementation of pastoral plan begins in July.
There are two popular ways of choosing the leaders – by election, where those who get the most votes automatically get the positions, and by appointment, where the parish priest picks the leaders he wants to place in the PPC.
In our parish, as mandated by our Diocese, we are following a communal discernment process in choosing our servant-leaders. Discernment is best done in prayer as we are asked to see everything from the perspective of God and not just from our own human perspective. It is basically finding God’s will for our parish. We ask not the servant-leaders we want but the servant- leaders God wants for our community.
Some key volunteers of the parish will discern and submit to me their nominees for the different positions. It is from this list that I will do my own discernment and choose the final line-up of PPC servants.
In my eight months of stay here at CTK, I can honestly say that this parish is blessed with so many good leaders. While my immersion into this community is not yet that deep, I am simply amazed by what I see – there’s excellence, dedication, and inspiration in the way these parish co-workers offer their services to the Church!
The nomination by the community is really valuable as it will provide me with more names to choose from, given my heretofore limited and shallow exposure to the deep membership of this community.
PPC coordinator Bro. Bert Santos pointed out that the new PPC should be aware of the recently launched eight pastoral priority agenda of the Diocese, of CTK’s 40th anniversary this year, and of the 500th anniversary of Christianity in the Philippines in 2021. How will the new PPC behave pastorally vis-à-vis these items?
To add, the participants in the Discernment Assembly last March 9 submitted their suggestions on the improvement they want to see in CTK parish. Some of the highlights are: good and relevant formation programs, more interaction with different ministries and organizations, more support for stewardship, prioritize the poor, more vibrant youth, improve traffic flow after mass, and for priests – better homilies! I think the new set of servant-leaders will not run out of things that will keep them engaged!
These are exciting times in our parish as we discern and choose the servants who will lead and nurture the CTK flock. Will there be new faces? Will there be ‘recycled’ old faces? Both options are possible but at this point, we will follow where the Spirit leads us.
We are looking for true servant leaders. ‘Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Matthew 20:26-28).
Pray therefore for our community and your pastor. In this whole discernment process, Scripture reminds us to ‘examine everything carefully’ (1 Thessalonians 5:21) and to always ‘test the spirit whether they are from God’ (1 John 4:1). Pray that our final choice is God’s choice!
