Rev. David Wolber graduated from Trinity Seminary in Columbus, Ohio back in 1952. He served Zion
Lutheran Church in Sandusky, Ohio for ten years, and was then a mission pastor (what we now call a
mission developer) at Nativity Lutheran Church in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, for fifteen years. He
then served as assistant to the Bishop of the Southeastern District of the American Lutheran Church
before being Called as Bishop of the ALC's new Southeastern District, a position that he held for eight
years. At the formation of the new ELCA in 1988 he served in two part-time positions, in the Mission
Partners program and as a representative of the ELCA Foundation. In 1991 he retired from ministry in
the ELCA and worked full-time for "Food for the Poor" (an interdenominational charitable organization
which provides assistance for missionaries of all denominations who are serving the poor in the island
nations of the Caribbean) for three-and-a-half years. He still serves part-time with this organization.
Dave has been active in the Cursillo Movement for eighteen years. Last, but not least, he has a wife
Shirley (also a Cursillista), three children and four grandchildren. Dave comes to us today as someone
who has served as a pastor, mission developer, Bishop of the Church, and as one who has many years of
Cursillo experience.
Bishop David Wolber
When you're in retirement, you don't often get such flowery introductions. It's nice to have one
again -- and I thank you for it. My name is Dave Wolber. I live in Key Largo, Florida with my wife,
Shirley, in our retirement home. We're members of Grace Lutheran in Miami Springs but worship more
frequently at Immanuel Lutheran, a little Missouri Synod church much closer to us on Plantation Key. I
made Lutheran Men's Cursillo #8 in Miami way back in 1976.
It sure is great to be here as a part of this community this weekend - if only to hear Carroll
reminisce earlier this afternoon about those earliest beginnings of this Secretariat there in Atlanta years
ago. I remember that time, and what a joy it was for me to be involved in those nebulous beginnings
during those few days. And now to be back with this group, for the very first time since then, and to see
how you have grown, and how you have assumed more and more responsibility, with more and more
things to do and more yet to be done, and to see what a great job you've been doing over these years --
it's just a big thrill for me to be here and to be a part of it all once again. It's great, too, to see so many of
you whom I have known over the years from one place or another -- old friends whom I had not expected
to see here, and new ones I'm just meeting and becoming acquainted with -- I thank God for both!
I've always tried to be supportive of the Cursillo Movement, or Via de Cristo, no matter where I was, or
in what office or station. I have done so NOT because Cusillo is some perfect thing, NOT because it's
(as you West Virginia folks like to call it) "Almost Heaven" -- sometimes I'm afraid it's almost the
opposite of that. It is a human invention. It is not God's greatest gift to the Church or to the world.
Because it is human, it has a lot of things that can go wrong with it. In spite of all that, I have always
found it to be an instrument - a tool which God is able to use like he uses all of our other human things
which we bring into being with all of their faults and failings. A tool, an instrument which God is able to
use in His church for its edification, for its growth, for its renewal and for a better fulfillment of its
mission in the world, and because of that I have said good words about Cursillo all through the years and
have participated in it whenever possible. However, I don't really feel very well qualified for this
particular task - this particular presentation - because my participation in Cursillo and Via de Cristo has
not been typical. It has not been like that of most other spiritual directors or pastors. I have tried to
remember how many teams I have served on. I think it's something like sixteen or seventeen over these
eighteen years of being a part of it, but in only about two or three of those has it been kind of normal
because the particular jobs that I've had - the calls I've had in the church of serving in district offices and
as bishop and that kind of thing. I've not been a part of the ongoing community - the Cursillo community
where I have participated in a weekend. My participation has really been in and out. I'm there and then
I'm gone and have not had a lot of contact with the continuing Via de Cristo community in that place.
I'm really not speaking then from the perspective of what I have done as spiritual director in the Fourth
Day experience, because I haven't done a heck of a lot. I'm rather speaking from the perspective of what
I have not done and may be what I wish that I could have done or what I think I would do if I had the
opportunity and that gives me a lot more leeway than if I had to speak on just what I've done. I have a
wide open agenda here, I'm at another disadvantage also with you (I have to confess this) when I left my
home this morning for this 350 mile drive up here. After I was sixty-five or seventy miles up the
highway, I realized that the nice, neat little briefcase that I carry everything in for a weekend like this was
still lying on the floor beside the big chair in our living room and I didn't have any of the materials for
this weekend. I didn't have the map of how to get here. It's been a long time since I've been here, I
didn't know if I could find it again. As soon as I saw the ABC Store down on the corner, I knew I was on
the right road. All of the beautiful notes that I had with all of the laborious effort that I had put in for a
masterpiece of a presentation for you this afternoon. All of that is still lying there on the floor. What I
have here are some things that I scribbled down on the seat beside me as I was driving along in the car up
the turnpike; sometimes holding it right up against the back end of that trailer truck that was right in front
of me. But, in spite of that, maybe we can offer something that could be of value.
"The role of the spiritual director in the Fourth Day." The very implication of that might come
as a surprise to some spiritual directors of weekends that there is anything of a responsibility or a role in
the Fourth Day, because I know that of many spiritual directors like myself as I have done many times are
simply there for a couple of days - three days, maybe - give a couple of rollos and are gone again and
that's about it. There is, indeed, the way I see it, a very profound responsibility and role for the spiritual
director in that Fourth Day experience of the Cursillo community. But, I think it begins before the first
day of the Fourth Day begins. It begins on the first day and carries through those three days that the
Cursillo ......... the weekend. I believe that there is responsibility and role of the spiritual director first of
all, right there on that weekend to get to know as personally as possible all of those candidates who are in
attendance that weekend - not just to be there to give two or three good rollos and make sure that
everyone like them. But to really be an ongoing kind of spiritual director for that part of the community.
And that takes knowing those people. It's hard to minister to strangers. Some pastors think that they can
do that. I knew a pastor when I served as bishop who wanted to call every three years. He wanted to
move on to another church and I asked him why. He said because that at the end of two years, I know
everyone too well. I get too involved with them personally. I know too much about them to minister to
their spiritual needs. I told him I thought he was full of baloney. That's not the way it works. The better
that you know people the more effectively you can minister to them in their needs with the grace and the
promises of God. I think that's true as well of the spiritual director of a weekend. I had the privilege of
serving on a team at Rayford #2. Rayford prison here in Florida - the second ecumenical Cursillo that we
held there along with Roman Catholics and Episcopalians. And there all of us who were spiritual
directors - and there were six of us - two Lutheran pastors and two Episcopal priests and two Catholic
priests and we all sat at the tables with the candidates. We didn't sit at some special all saints table at the
back of the room, but sat with the candidates. And I tell you that I never knew so well the candidates at a
Cursillo weekend as I knew those men who sat around that table, and of whom I was a part. Some of
those spiritual director relationships formed there that weekend have lasted longer - much longer that
others where the association with the candidates was much more remote. And so I think there is value in
that - of getting to know the people that you are being spiritual director for, and I would encourage all of
you in whatever kind of influence you have in your local secretariats to try to impress that upon your
spiritual directors, not to spend as little time as possible with the candidates but to spend as much time as
possible with them. At meals and on the walks that are taken - whatever free time there may be - not
being aloof from, but getting close to, because it's in that kind of an establishment of a close, pastoral
relationship that the potential for serving as an ongoing kind of spiritual director can develop. Now we
know that each candidate of course is supposed to select their own spiritual director after the weekend is
over. Probably in most cases, their own pastor. Sometimes it's necessary for them to turn to someone
else besides that spiritual director that they have chosen and its good to have someone that they
remember from their weekend experience - to whom they would feel free to go. I think that it's
important for that role that the spiritual director plays in the Fourth Day to realize that it begins during
the weekend itself. Another part of that weekend experience where I believe the spiritual director can
again prepare the way for the fourth Day experience is especially in that last of the Grace rollos - the Life
in Grace rollo on Sunday where I believe there's's a real opportunity to emphasize what the bottom line
of the Via de Cristo really is. That is that when they leave there as a changed person they nevertheless go
back into that same congregational setting that they came out of to be there a better servant than they
were when they left. Sometimes I think we miss that. To realize that the basic purpose and intention of
the Cursillo movement from its very beginnings in the Catholic Church was to prepare people to be better
church people - better churchmen and churchwomen, and I don't care when a person goes out of that
weekend how much of a growth they have had in their faith in their personal relationship with God. I
don't care what a better husband or father they may be or a better wife or mother they may be or how
much of a better schoolteacher or nurse or doctor or lawyer or plumber or whatever it may be or how
much of a better neighbor they may be. If they are not a better servant in their church, somebody has
missed the mark. I think that is an ongoing part of the spiritual director's responsibility and role to
keeping calling candidates and community leaders back to that fundamental basic of the whole movement
is to be better leaders and servants in the church. It begin there in those three days. I think, as I said
maybe that Life in Grace rollo is a place to lay the ground work for that - to make sure that everyone
knows what the bottom line is. Then immediately after that I think it is the spiritual director's role in the
Fourth Day to be involved, obviously. If the weekend has a weekend has a reunion after a month to be
there for that to be at Ultreyas and send-offs to be closings. I know the pastor's busy schedule is not
possible to do that all the time in every case but nevertheless to make it a priority and to try as best one
can. The reason for that is to give some credibility to something else that I would do now if I had that
opportunity of being involved as I've not had before. I would be there to give some credibility to
something else that I think it might be well for spiritual directors to consider doing because I think what I
would do the next time that I serve as spiritual director is that I would keep in contact at least with a letter
or two to every candidate who was there that weekend - maybe after a month or six months or a year -
just to offer some encouragement, to remind them of what is expected of them - to counsel them to avoid
a show of any kind of elitism which is one of the things that we suffer from as you well know. Remind
them again to be better servants in the church. Just to remind them that that one who was spiritual
director for them on those three days still cares about their life in the church and their life with God. I
think involvement in the Cursillo community lends credibility to any kind of counsel like that might be
given. Another thing I think I would do - I would make sure that even though I might be in a reunion
group with some members of my congregation some men I think I would also be in a reunion group with
some pastors. I think that with their permission I would invite some other pastor who has not had the
Cursillo experience to come and meet with us from time to time as a way of recruiting which I think is
one of the responsibilities of the spiritual director in the Fourth Day is to recruit other spiritual directors.
That might be a way of doing it. I would like to try that, at least - to invite a non-Cursillista pastor to
attend a reunion group periodically just to have the experience of knowing what we do when we get
together like that.
All of this says to support and be an advocate for the Cursillo movement. I think the spiritual
director ought to answer every question that anybody asks about Cursillo. One of the pastors that I work
very closely with, and was very active in the Cursillo movement says that he has done that on a number
of occasions. Pastors will come to him and say "I want to find out about this Via de Cristo thing. All the
people who go there won't tell me anything. He always says, "Ask anything. I'll tell you anything you
want to know." And he does. I think it is very productive. He's recruited some very fine pastors for the
movement because of that. I think spiritual directors need to do that among their fellow pastors. Answer
every question that is asked. Give counsel give guidance to the lay leadership as it is necessary.
Involvement and support and advocacy. If it could be summed up in three words, it would be that. To be
a part of what's going on - to share for their own benefit as I have experienced it many times myself, the
uplifting the growth the new commitment, the new ability to do whatever it is the Lord is calling me to do
at the time, and then to share that kind of potential with other pastors and to be whatever needs to be for
the community. Thank you.
Nate Lundgren: ... a native of California - born in the city of Sacramento, the oldest of three. A person
who has lived most of her life in the southeast, twenty-five years of it in Atlanta. Her degree as she left
college was in criminal justice - what better preparation for Christian ministry can you found? Jenny
attended Columbia Theological Seminary which is a Presbyterian school after growing up a Baptist, I
think she told me. We're ecumenical, folks. She received her theological degree from Lutheran
Theological Southern Seminary in 1990 as one of those second career pastoral types. She's been a pastor
of Trinity Lutheran Church in Paxton, Nebraska for the last three and a half years, is involved in
Cursillo/Via de Cristo and has been since 1980. She comes to us as a pastoral speaker who has been
involved as a lay person in Cursillo, so we look forward to hearing from Jenny today about the joys and
the disappointments and the ways in which she sees herself involved as one of the people in the Fourth
Day.
Rev. Jenny Venable
To those of you who would tell me to stand up, I am standing. I'd like to give you a big welcome
from Nebraska, which I had to look up on the map when I was assigned there, because I wasn't exactly
sure where it was. It's the land of the high plains and the sandhills, of Buffalo Bill Cody and other
cowboys, cattle and corn, wheat prairie dogs, and coyotes, and, of course, Big Red - the Cornhuskers.
I was asked to speak, as Pastor Lundgren said, as a pastor from a couple of perspectives. One,
because I am a female and because there aren't that many female pastors involved in the Via de Cristo
movement; and also as a person who is living, working, and serving in a rural community.
Nebraska, I would like to tell you, is a very rural community - a very big rural community. We
do have a few towns - Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island, Kearney, Scottsbluff, maybe - that could lay claim
to being cities, but the rest of our communities are small towns, villages, and wide places in the road. Of
two hundred sixty congregations, only about 25-30% are in those large, urban areas. The rest of them are
out on the plains or in the sandhills - small churches in small communities. Some are even out in the
middle of corn and wheat fields and aren't in any town.
Paxton, the little bitty town that I serve in, has 525 souls. That's within the village limits. It has
a grocery, two gas stations, a bank, a post office, two beauty salons, a small industry making PVC pipe, a
commodities broker, a cafe and, of course, two bars - very big in Nebraska ("There's not much to do. ").
It also has many of the wonderful qualities of small-town life, some generalities that do apply.
And when I was thinking about how I was going to do this presentation, a printed sheet of paper someone
had shown me came to mind. It was a list of "You know you're in a small town when ...." Some of you
have seen that list, I can tell.
At the risk of repeating a little bit for those of you who have,
"You know you're in a small town when you dial the wrong phone number and you talk for
twenty minutes anyway."
"You know you're in a small town when you forget to sign the check at the grocery store and the
bank puts it through anyway."
"You know you're in a small town when you're out taking a walk for fitness and before you can
get a block, six pickup trucks have stopped and their drivers have asked, 'Can I give you a lift?'"
"You know you're in a small town when you don't bother to lock your house, except at night
perhaps, or don't bother to take the keys out of your car when you run into the post office or the grocery
store - especially when it's really cold, snowy weather - you just keep it running."
"You know you're in a small town when your neighbors know you're pregnant before you do."
"You know you're in a small town when the mail is addressed to 'Pastor Jenny, Paxton, NE
69155,' and it gets to you just fine, thank you."
It's where the status symbol is a pickup truck. It doesn't matter what condition - new, old, beat
up.
And the entire school - kindergarten through twelfth grade - gets let out for all the games.
The most important thing about small towns, I would like to point out - and this is in reference to
Via de Cristo as a community and the small towns of Nebraska as communities - is the relationships
among the people. I think that is what impacts on the success - or limited success, perhaps - of the Via de
Cristo movement in that state. This is it:
"You know you're in a small town when you don't dare say anything about anybody, because
everybody is related to everybody else."
That's very, very true. In a small community such as this, the relationships are already there.
There are a lot of very old connections in terms of being there for generations of families. They and the
land that they own have been there for a long, long time. There's an insider/outsider mentality here. One
of my parishioners who married into one of the old families has been married for twenty years, and is still
considered an outsider, because she came from Colorado.
There are also ethnic considerations in our small community; and those of you who are stubborn
Germans (much as I am) will know that resistance to change is one of the hallmarks of that kind of
ethnicity. Randy's wearing a T-shirt that says, "We've never done it that way before." I think that must
be the national motto of those who have German ancestry. I include myself in that, too.
We also have a community where the kids have to move away to Lincoln or Omaha to get jobs.
If you live on a farm or on a ranch, and there's only so much land, you can't keep subdividing and
subdividing and subdividing and leaving it to the children You leave it to one offspring to manage the
farm and the rest have to move away. They generally only move back to come home to die or for
retirement. We belong "to the cemetery back home." I feel that most small Nebraska communities also
could claim this kind of mindset and these kind of dynamics.
Well, you might be asking by about this time, "What would all this have to do with Via de
Cristo?" I wouldn't blame you. Well, it's all tied up in that word "community." As we here all well
know, if there's one main characteristic p one identifying characteristic of Via de Cristo - it is the close
community we have. We strive so hard to develop community on the weekends with the candidates and
then to involve them as new Cursillistas - Via de Cristo "graduates," if you will - back in to be included
in the larger Via de Cristo community.
I believe that the Nebraska movement is struggling for a variety of reasons, and I think that is the
main one right there. To Nebraskans, who are largely rural, and have communities already established,
Via de Cristo may be just another community. We have the Lions. We have the Jaycees. We have the
Legion. We have the church. We have this and that. Why do we need another organization to belong
to?
Rural Nebraska has what the latest issue of The Lutheran calls a largely static population, and its
members already have enduring relationships with people and institutions. Those are relationships which
are more difficult for people who live in a more mobile urban or suburban setting, where moving in and
moving out is a way of life. City people might want to establish community with people of like mind,
while rural people already have these established communities. I believe some of them don't see a need
for another one. So why develop a relationship with a community that might be much more different
than anything they've ever experienced before? My gosh, these people hug each other, for heaven's
sake!
I see a couple of reasons why this should impact on why Via de Cristo may be struggling in
Nebraska, and it is. For one thing, there is the distance from one end of the state to the other, which can
be as much, I am told, as twelve hours or more. We're not one of the New England states that you can
get across in twenty minutes. For west of Scottsbluff to Omaha or Sioux City, because you can't take the
expressway the whole way, it would take you at least twelve hours.
There is also the cultural mindset that ties right into the issue of distance - that the state ends at
Grand Island. Now, if you can imagine a map of Nebraska, over in the northeast corner is Omaha, and
then a little to its southwest, Lincoln. Grand Island is about in the middle, and then west of that doesn't
exist for people who live in Omaha and Lincoln - it's half the state.
This is the kind of mindset we have to come up against. People don't want to drive very far, not
even to serve or go to a Via de Cristo weekend. In fact, we have had in the past year or so a movement
by some people in the Omaha Ultreya that wanted to pull out - to secede and form their own Secretariat,
so that they could have their weekends right there in Omaha and not have to drive.
There are also agricultural considerations when you're trying to plan weekends. We have a lot of
farmers and ranchers, and just to survive as farmers, a lot of them have to diversify. They don't grow
just one crop. Most of them don't even just grow crops. They have to have cattle, too, or some other
way of having income in case of rain or snow or hail or any of the other things that can destroy the crops.
So between calving time, wheat planting, corn planting, wheat harvest, and corn harvest, when do you
plan a weekend - especially since we have to send the men first? When can you get a farmer off the land,
except in the dead of winter, when it's difficult to drive anywhere?
We also have the "cowboy" mentality - rugged individualism. It mitigates against the concept
and the practice of Christian community upon which Cursillo/Via de Cristo, especially in the Fourth Day,
is built. That idea of the great American mythic hero - the cowboy - is pervasive: Just me and my horse; I
don't need anybody else; I don't need a wife and kids; I don't need to be tied down; Don't fence me in. I
think there is a lot of that mindset also in the high plains of Nebraska.
In the past twenty years (and this is again from The Lutheran) much pop psychology has drawn
heavily from the myth of the rugged individualist. It reinforced the idea that freedom and self-fulfillment
involved leaving spouses, families, and neighborhoods, and abandoning commitment to social
institutions like churches and schools. "Just me. Just me and my horse. Just me and my pickup."
When you have this kind of thing going on, what do you do? The best you can. I am in an
unusual situation, as Pastor Nate said. I've been a pastor for three-and-a-half, which means the
"glommed onto" me really quickly. I haven't learned to say "no" yet.
There have been different dynamics we have been trying in the past year and a half to get
participation in Via de Cristo, and enthusiasm in Via de Cristo, built back up again. We had gotten to the
point where we didn't have enough candidates to really have a weekend. I think the last weekend we
had, we had seven female candidates. I'm not sure how many there were on the men's. The Secretariat
decided that as a struggling Secretariat with limited funds, it would be poor stewardship to have a Via de
Cristo weekend without sixteen candidates. Do you know how hard it is to find sixteen candidates in the
state of Nebraska? Pretty difficult, right now, for the reasons I mentioned above. So, we tried a couple
of things.
First of all, Pastor Dick Hardell, whom many of you know because he was in Florida, was an
assistant to the bishop of Nebraska, and he composed a letter to pastors. It encouraged them to try to get
involved in Via de Cristo. Along with this I, as Spiritual Director of the Nebraska Secretariat, sent a
letter to every pastor in Nebraska along with the little clergy Via de Cristo brochure encouraging them
not only to attend, but to encourage their members to attend.
I published just within my own little congregation an article in the church newsletter. I made a
presentation in a W-ELCA unit meeting. I cornered people one-on-one and said, "I know about this
wonderful weekend retreat." I wrote encouraging articles for the Secretariat newsletter trying to motivate
some of the lay folk I don't know in Nebraska to actively recruit candidates.
I also came up with the idea to take that article I wrote for my own church's newsletter, expand
on it, and give it to the Ultreyas to have it published in their county newspapers, and include the Walk to
Emmaus and Episcopal Cursillo, etc., to get them involved somehow. Community newspapers will
publish religious articles as long as there's nothing too controversial in them.
Family involvement is very important. Of the three people from my congregation who now have
gone on a Via de Cristo weekend, there's a mother and a daughter, and a third lady who has gone is the
closest friend of the mother; so I think if we can get one in a family going, perhaps we can get the others
in the family going as well. That would be very important in a small community where it's all family,
anyway.
I've talked to the Catholics in town who are active in Cursillo and seen about the possibility of
holding joint Ultreyas. If we can't get something started just among the Lutherans, we'll try going
ecumenical.
The major solution is education, education, education - which is most of what I have been
delineating as points here. Doing what we can do - not possibly can't do. We need not to despise small
beginnings.
We do have a success story going, and that is the prison weekend. We just had the Women's #4
at the correctional institute in York, Nebraska. It seems to be catching on. Eight of those who have been
trough before (some of whom have gone through on the very first weekend, I am told) are beginning to
build a Via de Cristo community within the prison. There again, in a place where there is no community,
there is community building. Where there already is community, it's difficult to get them involved in
another one.
We also have a contact still in the Bishop's office - one of the other two assistants to the Bishop
is also a Cursillista. In addition, we have what is called a PMA program - Parish Ministry Associate
program - a pilot program by the Nebraska and Central States Synods. It trains lay people to do some of
the things that pastors do in places where pastors can't go, because the congregations can't afford them,
and because in western Nebraska specifically, it's very costly to bring in a retired Interim Pastor -
mileage and so forth. We "wheedled" our way into making sure that going to a Via de Cristo would give
them credit toward graduating from that program. The more people we can get to go, the more people we
can get to be p.r. people.
I think, overall, Via de Cristo needs to be seen as something folks both need and want - and that's
the secret. Its vitality depends upon the value Cursillistas place upon the community life offered by Via
de Cristo. Education and communication and prayer are important for a Via de Cristo to reach all those
for whom the Holy Spirit wants a fuller and more dynamic life in Christ.
"You know you're in a Via de Cristo community" when there is a group of people working
together, learning together, laughing, crying, singing, praying, and communing together, lifting up the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ, seeking to make others see how wonderful, how exciting, and how truly
heavenly Christian discipleship and service can be. So pray for us in Nebraska that we can help some of
these cowboys and these Germans get off their horses and join in the hoedown. Thank you very much.
Rev. Peter Setzer
What a JOY to listen to the previous two speakers - their SPIRIT, their EXPERIENCE is a gift to
us, and to the entire movement.
They refer to the zeal for Evangelism found in the Via de Cristo movement. This may be the
most valuable fruit of all. God knows, the Lutheran Church needs a strong dose of Evangelistic Zeal.
For centuries, Germans and Scandinavians have distinguished themselves among the world's cultures for
their reluctance to share emotions or dare usurp the Pastor's professional prerogative to be the
MOUTHPIECE for God in the local parish. We are like a FURNACE with no ductwork, holding all the
heat inside. Lutherans may have the fire of the Spirit deep within, but we're so well insulated, you'd
never know it.
We're thinkers, not feelers. We boast the world's finest theology, but lay folk are terrified to talk
about it. Decades ago, enterprising church leaders, after trying workshops on Evangelism, and courses
on Evangelism, and Rallys on Evangelism, all to no avail, decided to try the genetic solution. Since
Jehovah's Witnesses are so zealous in their outreach, they would dip into their gene pool, and crossing
Lutheran thinkers with Jehovah's Witness zealots breed a master race of lay evangelists, eager to witness.
So they found ten willing Lutherans to marry Jehovah's Witness mates. Finally the experiment is
showing measurable results, the progeny of that hybrid now aging to their early 20's.
What they have produced is ten Lutherans who will show up faithfully at your front door every
Saturday morning, and say not one word! A total bust! So much for the genetic approach. We've got a
better answer. It's not the ONLY good answer, but a very good one, and it's called VIA DE
CRISTO/CURSILLO! When a sizable segment of a congregation is meeting every week with several
Christian friends, planning Apostolic Action -- Evangelism -- and sharing their closest moment with
Christ, developing the ability to TALK about Jesus Christ and his loving action in their lives, and praying
in support of one another's outreach, EVANGELISM is going to happen! The heat of the furnace will
radiate outward. The Word will get out, the tongue-tied Teresa's and Silent Sams will find their voice,
and that parish will sprout dozens of mighty mouthpieces for God! Talking about Christ can be as simple
as flying PAPER airplanes. Any Christian can do it!
Nate Lundgren, the NLS Spiritual Director has asked me to respond to three questions. The first
one: "How do I participate as a pastor in the Fourth Day?"
This must be an important question, because it has been addressed every year for the past four
years at the Annual Meeting. Why? This is a movement, and we keep reminding each other of that,
celebrating the fact, guarding the custom to make sure it stays that way.
But, apparently, pastors do have a KEY ROLE in the movement. I think they do, for better or for
worse, and when we ignore that fact the movement suffers. I've been in the movement for eleven years
now, and have served as pastor in two parishes that have produced over one hundred pilgrims each. I've
served on the Secretariat three years, and have taken upon myself to communicate with over 100
Lutheran pastors about Via de Cristo. I've seen the movement develop differently in many churches.
Jesus' parable of the Sower sowing seed in different kinds of soil could serve as a description.
In some churches the pastor comes back from his first weekend, and with a nucleus of inspired
lay leaders, introduces the movement in his parish. It flourishes quickly, and soon dies.
In another parish the pastor attends, but all his efforts back at the parish meet with solid
resistance. Nothing happens. The movement doesn't take root. It's over before it got started.
In another parish the movement thrives for many years, but then something happens, a crisis in
the parish, the pastor moves to another congregation, conflicting forces rise up and choke out the
movement, and no secretariat members have heard anything of the pilgrims in that parish since. Upon
inquiry someone explains, "Burn out. We just burned out."
In yet another parish, everything seems to work right from the beginning. Year after year that
congregation sends men and women to the weekends, leadership emerges that serves the whole
movement. Reunion groups are active; the congregation is dynamic, the Word is received with JOY.
Why is it this way? Why does it go so well in one parish and not another? That is a question
I've been asking for a long time. Why does the Fourth Day flourish in some parishes and WILT in
others?
I venture to say that one of the key figures in determining the outcome is the local parish pastor.
He can make it or break it. I think we've spent considerable worthwhile time talking about how the
pastor can make it, we also need to devote some time to considering how the pastor can BREAK it. In
other words, how do pastors typically screw up the fourth day? Including me. I've got eleven years of
mistakes to share!
Last Sunday, while visiting in the home of my Associate Pastor, Joseph Kovitch, after the
baptism of his little boy, Jesse, we took in a television show entitled "BASEBALL BLOOPERS!" Surely
you've all seen it, or something similar, "BASKETBALL BLOOPERS." "FOOTBALL BLOOPERS!"
They're all hilarious fun.
We could come up with a video, "VIA DE CRISTO BLOOPERS!" "A LIST OF DUMB AND
STUPID THING PASTORS HAVE DONE WITH THE FOURTH DAY." No made up stuff necessary,
all painfully real bloopers, and not very funny.
- Like the pastor who came back from the weekend all hyped up and decided to require all
members of the church council to attend a weekend. He found out they had minds of their own.
- Or the pastor who, soaring on the wings of inspiration, returned to his parish and disbanded all
committees, replacing them with REUNION GROUPS. He was gone in 6 months!
- Or the pastor who bought into the "lay movement" thing totally, so did nothing, and found his
pilgrims angry over his lack of support.
- Or the pastor who wanted to move his congregation to a brand new site, but unable to sell the
entire congregation on his vision of growth, sent all his supporters to a Via de Cristo weekend,
and eventually that segment of the congregation broke away with the pastor to form a new parish.
Guess who detests Via de Cristo?
- Or the pastor who was so moved by daily communion on the weekends that he decided to
introduce every Sunday Communion in his parish, and ran into a hornets nest of resistance to his
idea and to Via de Cristo, where they saw the idea originating.
- Or the pastor who frequently held up Via de Cristo members in sermons as examples to be
followed.
- Or the pastor who prayed in the prayer of the church for Via de Cristo weekends, but not other
congregational ministries.
This should be enough to get us started. I'm making a list of PASTORS' FOURTH DAY
BLOOPERS, so if any of you have one to share from your pastor, or some other pastor you've heard
about, write it down and hand it to me. I hope to find a good use for them.
Of course, LAY PEOPLE aren't entirely innocent.
We could make a video on the dumb, stupid things LAY PEOPLE have done on the Fourth Day.
- Telling others in the parish they're in bad need of Via de Cristo
- Hugging fellow pilgrims and ignoring everyone else
- Wearing their reunion disciplines like a badge of honor
- Name dropping in the parish words like "Rollo", "Abrazzo", "Ultreya"
- Nagging other pilgrims who do not attend ultreyas, send-offs, clausuras
- Scheduling reunion groups during other church events, and attending the reunion
- Using their combined political clout to get rid of staff members they do not like
- Giving their offering to the Via de Cristo movement instead of the congregation
- Telling the organist, choir members and the pastor that Lutheran hymns are boring and need to be
replaced with upbeat songs like those on the weekends
- Giving gobs of volunteer time to leadership at weekends, and neglecting congregational tasks.
While these bloopers are not typical of the average pilgrim, they are familiar to many of us, and
each one damages the movement in the parish. It makes some folks hard as a rock in resisting the
movement. It discourages good faithful Christians, and distorts the image of the movement in the eyes of
others.
Surprisingly, thank God, the movement may survive in a parish in spite of many of these
bloopers occurring, but those of us who feel responsible for the movement want to minimize such
negative 4th day occurrences, so the Holy Spirit can use the movement to renew the parish.
Now the original question was, "How do I participate as a pastor in the Fourth Day?"
Answer: With encouraging and firm pastoral guidance. That, I believe is a vital KEY to the movement's
success. The Pastor must provide encouraging and firm pastoral guidance. So that the movement
doesn't become a destructive force in the parish, to minimize the BLOOPERS, the clergy kind and the
laity kind.
My encouragement is LOW KEY and BEHIND THE SCENES, so as not to alienate the rest of
the congregation. Pastors who come back from the weekend all fired up for Via de Cristo, who jump into
the movement with all four feet, and give a hard sell to the congregation are asking for trouble.
The members begin to wonder, "Our pastor is more excited about Via de Cristo than he is about
the congregation. (They feel threatened. They feel discounted. They feel cheated. After all, we're
paying his salary. He's been too busy to spend much time with us as is, now he's with us even less!")
They may feel jealous. "He's closer to those in the movement than he is to the rest of us. He
thinks our faith is inferior: we've got to go to a weekend to please him. These are feelings that average
members can have, and one of my jobs as the pastor of the WHOLE CONGREGATION is to minimize
these feelings by LOW KEY PROMOTION, publicly offering Via de Cristo as one good ministry among
many, open to anyone in the congregation, and the pastor thinks it's okay not to go.
One of the pastor's most essential tasks is to keep the congregation UNIFIED. Avoiding
divisions into "PILGRIMS" and "NON-PILGRIMS;" "SUPER-CHRISTIANS" AND "COMMON
CHRISTIANS"; "The IN GROUP" and the "OUT Group".
A certain amount of this is impossible to avoid and have a movement strong enough to
REVITALIZE the parish. Any movement that makes a difference, that calls for change, growth, regular
worship, regular study, regular witness will draw some critics. Yes, Jesus and his reunion group of 12
disciples had their detractors as well as their admirers.
The point is to minimize unnecessary criticism, avoid unnecessary backlash, avoid unnecessary
conflicts that cause burnout, so the movement will FLOURISH FOR MANY YEARS and the
congregation is RENEWED, and in turn the community and the world.
"What do I do, behind the scenes to encourage the movement in the Fourth Day?"
- I'm active in my own reunion group, gladly so.
- I attend if possible all the clausuras in which members of my congregation make their first
weekend.
- Within a week after the weekend, I meet with those who have just made the weekend, with their
sponsors present, if possible, to process the weekend, find out where each is at, and detect if any
need private pastoral guidance or care. I give them encouragement on what to do and what to
avoid. We go through the piety section of the card together, and I lead them on their first altar
visit. (Lay leaders take over from there, get them into reunion groups, etc.)
- If a mate is giving strong resistance, I'll meet with either one or both.
- If a pilgrim had a negative experience on the weekend, I'll have a private pastoral conference.
- At least twice a year, we'll have a congregational Ultreya at which I speak to the entire group
words of encouragement about the direction the movement is going in the parish and give them
words of warning about the negative things to avoid.
- I meet several times a year with our congregational steering committee to keep them encouraged
and moving in the right direction, and to think through together any problems occurring.
- I generally write palanca to every member of my parish going to a weekend or working a
weekend. I generally do not have time to write palanca for others. (Sorry!)
- When pilgrims come to my office with a concern or for spiritual direction, we nearly always
conclude with an altar visit. However, this is not limited to pilgrims. Since my first weekend,
it's been my pastoral style with all counselees and with all parishioners, whether they're a
pilgrim or not.
- Provide pastoral help in resolving conflicts occurring between persons in the movement, within
and outside reunion groups.
(1) How to deal with an overbearing person in a reunion group, who is so much so that
the others stop attending
(2) The person who talks on and on, extending the reunion so long that others are impatient and irritated
(3) The overly needy individual who dominates the attention of the group, week after week, so that the needs of others do not get met
(4) When members are alienated - no longer on speaking terms
These are spiritual matters and need attention. Sometimes their pastor needs to intervene.
This time I spend, is "behind the scenes." I don't advertise the fact that I do it. I keep reminding
pilgrims, over and over, that the purpose of the movement is not to put on weekends, but to renew the
entire congregation. They may have been to the mountain of transfiguration, but what people in the
parish will be observing is how it makes a difference in their leadership in the congregation, their
devotion to the congregation.
Back last fall, during the Presidential elections, the point was made over and over to a President
who just "didn't get it", "It's the ECONOMY, STUPID!" Sometimes I feel like saying something similar
about Via de Cristo. "It's the congregation, stupid!" When they get too wrapped up in the wrong things,
I want to help them avoid another boneheaded blooper. "It's the CONGREGATION ,stupid!" That's the
Christian community that Via de Cristo is called by the Holy Spirit to serve. Don't neglect it, or
withdraw from it. Love its people, all of them, and energize its ministries. God will be glorified, and Via
de Cristo will have served its purpose.
Do we need to develop a piece entitled "PITFALLS OF PASTORAL LEADERSHIP OF VIA DE
CRISTO?"
St. Paul said, "Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible,
respectable, ......He must not be a recent convert, or he may be puffed up with conceit and fall into the
condemnation of the devil." (I Tim. 3:2ff)
The most dangerous time for Pastors is the first 6 months after making their first Cursillo. Some
come off a weekend bearing characteristics of a "recent convert", experiencing unprecedented euphoria
and suddenly having a bright new vision of what the congregation is called to be, imposes it on an
unwilling flock. Naive enthusiasm, blind to the pitfalls, may lead a congregation into trouble!
A PITFALL, by definition, is covered. Not seen. The trail ahead looks clear. Then the
unsuspecting hiker experiences a sudden surprise, and he's in well over his head and can't get out!
The Result: He may suffer crippling disillusionment from which he never fully recovers, or so
damages the trust of his congregation that his ministry is severely and permanently handicapped.
Such pastors represent a low percentage of the pastors - less than 5%, but these pastors and
congregations hinder the movement for the other 95%. Bishops hear about them - and, as they should be
they are concerned.
RECRUITMENT OF PASTORS
Regarding the recruitment of pastors, it would be helpful to consider in advance the reservations
non-participating pastors have to getting involved in Via de Cristo. Then we can consider an effective
reply.
MAJOR RESERVATIONS PASTORS HAVE TO ATTENDING A WEEKEND:
1. Fear that the movement will require too much time when already hard-pressed to catch up.
Answer: Your time investment will reap compensating benefits in producing motivated church leaders. You'll have more help than before!
2. Fear that the movement will become divisive in the parish. (Cliques,opposition)
Answer: Encouraging and firm Pastoral Guidance will suffice to produce significant renewal in the parish.
3. Fear that the pastor will be expected to give leadership in an area of spirituality with which he/she is inadequately trained or equipped.
Answer: "Spiritual Direction" = "Pastoral Care". The whole ELCA is hungering for growth in this area and training opportunities abound
4. Fear that the movement will bring "mindless emotionalism" to the parish.
Answer: It more likely will bring a spreading zeal for regular worship, Bible study,
prayer and Evangelism, the staples of Lutheran Life.
Recruitment strategies for pastors must address these issues.
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