The Leadership Team would like me to highlight the many movements that are happening within and because of our community and get us ready for a conversation of where we want to go next.
Who Are We?
If you haven’t looked at it in a while, you should see our “About” Page on our website. https://servantsentrance.com/about/. In this part 3, we look at Pope Francis’ vision for church and how we fit into that vision and how that might inform “what’s next” for us.
Synodality = St John Fisher-ality.
If you didn’t catch my Pentecost reflection on this topic of how we are really really good at Synodality, it might be helpful to go watch it here. Synodality can simply be defined as journeying together (or accompanying one another or working together) in a particular way. But what is that particular way? It means
- Starting by evoking the Holy Spirit
- Come together with prayerful intentionality and create a radically egalitarian, humble, emotionally safe space for collaborative discernment
- Listen to the Holy Spirit speaking from within and through others in a process of discernment particularly with the Conversations in the Spirit or Sacred Conversation model.
- And then continually living out and “doing” church, from that humble, collaborative respectful mindset.
At St John Fisher, that became a way of life over the years. We KNOW how to DO synodality. So when you hear “synodality”, just think “St John Fisher-ality”.
Why it Matters: While the Roman Catholic governance structure of church is still (and will remain) hierarchal, many of the challenges of hierarchy can be overcome with a Synodal approach. We did it at SJFC. To be clear – Pope Francis is not changing the church, he is fundamentally working to change HOW WE DO CHURCH. This Synod (massive series of global gathering sessions) on Synodality has ignited a process he hopes will reboot the work of the Second Vatican Council and its vision and many believe they are seeing the beginning of that reboot. While many will fixate on specific topics and become excited or crushed on a weekly basis about progress towards what they want, the real work of the Synod on Synodality is to inspire and empower dioceses, parishes, organizations, and regions to break the bonds of current polarized battle grounds and instead focusing on a synodal way of working on improving “communion, participation, and mission”. The Servants’ Entrance Community is a model for this, and we could have a role to play in Pope Francis’ vision in the Detroit area.
Next Level Synodality:
What might be our role to help Pope Francis in this revolution/transformation of “How” to do church? If we ARE called to be part of this, cultivating synodality involves moving past our comfort bubbles of people who “think like us”. Many people exclaimed that’s what they liked about the listening sessions. And that was very powerful. That first round was surprisingly healing as we cried and laughed together and then found out there were people like us in every diocese in our country, and in every country around the world. Our words were in the final collection of voices heard around the globe. But where are we now?
The final session of the Universal (Rome) phase of the Synod on Synodality happens this October and we will be sending Rebecca MacMaster to help us understand what’s happening as well as keeping glued to all our news outlets at America Magazine and National Catholic Reporter and the Vatican News site. But we already know quite a lot about what’s next. A major goal is to bring Synodality to everyday life, everywhere and to innovate and explore all the ways to do that. And the people in the Rome Synod meeting (that included lay people and women!) commented on 20 areas in the first draft of the document where we could start.
Here’s the challenge: To accomplish this goal of a new way of “HOW” we do church (synodal), it means expanding the Sacred Listening Session process to communities and parishes for a critical reason. So people who disagree can do it fruitfully as was experienced in Rome. This is the first next step. It means reaching out and meeting and welcoming those on the margins. It means using that same Sacred Listening Session process to bring a diverse group of people with opposing viewpoints into a safe space to discuss important and hard topics. And using that same process to develop ecumenical relationships for shared service, formation, worship, encouraging contemplation, and saving the planet. We as the SEC have already started to take steps in this direction, but we sense on the leadership team that we are being called to work with others in order to build synergy. We see synergy as constructive collaboration and integration ultimately equal to more than just the sum of its parts, to helps us all go farther together. Right now, we are passionate, but small.
Continue to pray for our SE Community, Pope Francis, and this journey of living synodality. Much love, Terry
Next time in Part 4: Emerging Church
servantsentrance.com 