Have you ever worked at a place and found yourself saying: “If we only could live up to our potential then things would really be great?” For me, personally I have said this at every Church I have worked at over the past 16 or so years. To tell you the truth, in that time, I have only seen it really happen once or twice. Although I feel sad even saying that, it is more often the reality. It sometimes seems that we are all working toward the same goal, but all moving in different directions to achieve it.

Sometimes in the Catholic Church we are trying to move to a place so different than where we have been for so long that it’s like moving mountains just to try to sing some new music or start a new program. Other times it may seem that our vision of what things should be like is so different than anyone else we work with. This can be very frustrating and can often lead ministers to burn out. So what do we do to ensure that our Ministry lives up to it’s potential? It has been said that anything worth doing is worth doing well. This is so true! If you are going to do something…do it well! Do it better than well! Evaluate the areas you are weak in and work to make them stronger. If there is a visioning problem where you and members of your staff don’t see eye to eye, try to get your parish to hold a retreat for your staff so that you can bring in someone from the outside to help you as a group to work on your common goals and visions to refine them to a common mission you can work towards together. If everyone can get on the same page and hear publicly where each person is coming from, new respect can be achieved and common ground can be found. Whatever you do to improve yourself or your staff, do it with utmost care to ensure that you are working together while respecting where each person comes from to ultimately try to bring our people closer to Christ with a common vision.