Bringing Experience, Love Of Church To The Table As Facilitators

For decades Gayle Uebelhor and Alan Hoffman have been leading groups, big and small, as professional facilitators. And if there’s one thing they have learned along the way, it’s that each group experiences a watershed moment where someone rises up and inspires the others to unite and overcome the obstacles in front of them.

They’ve seen this dynamic play out in the corporate world, and they’re witnessing it again within the core teams that they are facilitating as part of the diocesan strategic planning process.

Each of the seven deaneries in the Diocese of Evansville has a core team that includes the priests and pastoral life coordinators from all parishes within the deanery, as well as two non-staff parishioners from each church within the deanery. These core teams began meeting in October 2012, led by Uebelhor and Hoffman and guided by diocesan recommendations and certain criteria that have been established as part of the strategic planning process.

The mission of each team is to develop a “deanery plan” that will be presented to Bishop Charles C. Thompson in March of this year. Each team has held at least four meetings, with some having held as many as six.

Hoffman said each of the seven teams is moving at a different pace and dealing with unique issues and concerns. But the challenge for all of them is the same: the individuals within the group must learn to trust one another and the process, and work together as part of a larger, deanery-focused team.

“The process is very personal for people,” said Hoffman. “This is where they grew up, where their grandfather built the church. There’s real passion. But the reality of it is we have fewer priests and we have a lot of churches, and we have seen changes in technology and infrastructure. It’s very difficult.”

That’s where being an experienced facilitator comes into play. Having worked together several times over the years, Hoffman and Uebelhor know how to help members of a group arrive at that point — that watershed moment — where they band together and allow things to take off in the right direction.

They described watching it happen recently within one of the larger core teams. Hoffman said the group was really struggling with the parameters and limitations of the process when a gentleman from a smaller parish stood up and said, “Wait a minute here — what I’m hearing is fear. We’ve got to pray. We’ve got to believe in the Holy Spirit. We’ve got to do something to help ourselves.”

“This is a very emotional experience,” said Hoffman. “It takes awhile for a group from different churches to come together and to be able to open up to one another.”

Uebelhor said he and Hoffman designed the initial core team meetings to encourage a spirit of collaboration among representatives from various churches within each deanery.

“The first couple of meetings for each team were structured in such a way that it just led them to interact with each other,” Uebelhor said. “We didn’t make much obvious progress, and people might have been thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a waste of time.’ But then people began to get into the flow of it, they began to trust each other and to interact. Things began to take shape pretty quickly.”

Hoffman and Uebelhor say they understand and appreciate how challenging the strategic planning process is for many in the diocese because they’re also members of the diocese. A Celestine native, Hoffman is a parishioner of St. Joseph Church, Jasper. Uebelhor is a member of St. Anthony Church in Evansville who grew up attending St. Mary Church in Huntingburg.

“We feel the pain people are experiencing and we’re sensitive to people’s concerns, because it’s impacting us as well,” said Hoffman. “Our own parishes are being impacted.”

Initially the idea was for Hoffman and Uebelhor to split up the 50 or 60 total meetings that will be required to complete the process, but once they got started and saw how sensitive and emotional some of the discussions were, they decided to work through the entire process as co-facilitators. That means attending as many as four or five evening sessions a week, in different communities. They say each meeting is different.

“We always have an agenda and we’re usually pretty aggressive with it,” explained Uebelhor. “But inevitably things come up along the way that require more time.”

Uebelhor said one of the challenges has been helping the core team members differentiate between quantitative criteria (like capacity of a church, number of Masses, Mass attendance) and qualitative criteria (such as family heritage and the culture of a community). While both types of criteria are important, Uebelhor said, it’s often useful to work through the quantitative data first.

Uebelhor and Hoffman are excited about the upcoming Town Hall meetings that are planned for each deanery. All parishioners are invited to attend the Town Hall meeting for their deanery to listen, learn and provide feedback.

“If there would be one overall objective (of the Town Hall meetings), it would be to look at where we are right now and give input,” said Uebelhor, while pointing out that the core teams will have another six to eight weeks after the Town Hall meetings to continue to finalize their plans.

“It’s not about debating or arguing or trying to define anything specific that evening,” Uebelhor said.  “It’s about listening and providing constructive input to help the core teams move forward.”

Both Hoffman and Uebelhor say they have been impressed by the openness, intelligence and dedication of the lay core team members. “We have some fantastic lay people who are very interested and they are very intelligent,” said Uebelhor.

“It’s really a blessing to see these people working together when they get over the hump and they start to gel,” added Hoffman. “It’s pretty exciting.”

For more information about the Strategic Planning process, see Bishop Charles C. Thompson’s article on page 5 and also visit www.themessageonline.org to view an updated Q&A in the Strategic Planning Resources section.