Flourishing

"It was a life-changing decision for me. In fact, it was a resurrection experience for me, and it was life-giving. This is what I pray for all of you. Jesus came not so that we might cope; Jesus came so that we might flourish. Jesus said, 'I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly' (Jn. 10:10)."

- Bishop Edward Malesic, A Flourishing Apostolic Church, p. 4, 2024

Merry Christmas - it's technically still the Christmas season through this upcoming weekend - and Happy New Year! I hope and pray that your Christmas break filled you with hope, restored you with joy, and rejuvenated you with love.

Emmanuel - God is with us!

Over the past few days we've celebrated the feasts of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (1/4) and St. John Neumann (1/5), and the Solemnity of the Epiphany of our Lord (1/5). As such, I have reflected on the connection between and among these heroes of Catholic education, the great mystery of the Incarnation, and the Epiphany of our Lord.

A through-line: God sent us His only Son so that we might flourish.

Our Catholic schools should make Christ incarnate to our students. Students should encounter and develop a relationship with Jesus through our teachers and staff members. They should know the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of Christ through our classes and programming. They should hear Christ's call on their lives through faith formation opportunities at our schools.

In a sense, every interaction within our schools should be a sort of Christmas during which Christ bursts into the lives of our students and sets them on a new path. Every day within our schools should be an Epiphany in which Christ is "made manifest" to our communities.

Let us invoke the intercession of Sts. Elizabeth Ann Seton and John Neumann and the countless other women and men upon whose shoulders we stand in Catholic education. They acted as missionaries, visionaries, strategists, collaborators, analysists, and professionals that established and expanded the system of Catholic schools across our great country. May we follow in their footsteps as we seek to develop, implement, and tweak systems and structures in our schools so that we, too, can expand our reach and enhance our missionary impact on our communities.

The Christmas season may be coming to an end in our Church, but let us make every day Christmas day in our schools, where Christ is made known, loved, and served. Let us make every moment in our schools incarnational, where community members see Christ in each other and in every class, program, and activity.

Christmas may be coming to an end, but this is precisely when the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal the broken,

to feed the hungry,

to release the prisoner,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among the people,

to make music in the heart (from Howard Thurman's poem, "The Work of Christmas").

Merry Christmas, today and everyday, in our Catholic schools and everywhere. 

Never Stop Never Stopping

At a recent meeting with Catholic school leaders, I offered a framework that undergirds my work and our collective efforts to create systems, structures, programs, policies, and procedures that will help us advance the mission of our schools. Taken from a part of change management known as improvement science, I have been using cycles of continuous improvement to help direct and guide my efforts throughout my career. 

Chances are good that you have employed a similar system during your leadership as well.

As noted by the graphic, this cycle - or more appropriately stated - these cycles are intended to engage a number of leadership traits (missionary, visionary, strategic, collaborative, analytical, professional).

To start, we design a PLAN that is rooted in our mission, inspired by our vision for the future state of our school, and designed collaboratively with a specific strategy for us to employ.

Once crafted, we execute the plan with professionalism. We DO what the plan states with magnanimity, striving for greatness for our God, our students, our faculty and staff, our community, and ourselves. We rally others to play their part in this scheme, integrating, differentiating, delegating, and empowering across personnel and community members.

The next phase of one of these cycles demands that we humbly analyze the efficiency and effectiveness of our intended progress, helping us to identify affirmations of work that should continue and recommendations for how we can continuously improve. This STUDY must be thoughtful, so that the data we construct - leading vs. lagging indicators, low vs. high inference observations - actually informs us about how we are doing.

From there, we start the cycle again, taking ACTion to either stay the course while continuing to monitor our ongoing progress, or make adjustments with a new plan, implementation, and analysis.

This cycle of continuous improvement creates iterative improvements. While not intended to create instability across organizations, these cycles allow us to methodically and incrementally improve and enhance our schools.

As we continue to move throughout the 2024–2025 school year, may we CONTINUE to use this framework - Plan, Do, Study, Act - to propel us forward in advancing the mission of our schools.