EOI—Secretariat Leadership – NLS President Brian Comeno

EOI#2

How can we retain our pilgrims and insure that they return and become future team members and serve on future weekends? Secretariat leaders were encouraged to examine our practices in sponsorship practices continuing far beyond the weekend and creating “generational” sponsorships.  Secretariats should be actively raising up a mentor leaders to stand as a secondary layer of leadership allowing all voices and all ages to feel like they are part of the group and their ideas and concerns matter.

EOI#3

Brian Comeno started the session by asking everyone to list answers to 3 questions:

1. How many pilgrims when through your weekends this past year?
2. How many of those pilgrims are under 35 years of age?
3. How many of those pilgrims came back to serve on a weekend?
   
4. After we went around the room reporting our answers, Brian asked why don’t pilgrims come back especially the young people? Recent statistics show that:
    35-55 year old men are returning to church
    Seminary attendance is growing amongst women, especially as a second career
   
5. Brian shared a story about a recent Ultreya where only 2 of the 18 pilgrims returned after their weekend. After asking why, the rector responded that they didn’t feel welcomed, included or heard. Brian called one of the missing pilgrims and asked if he’d go to lunch to learn more about why he didn’t return to the Ultreya. After learning his reasons, Brian talked to the Lay Director and Rector about ways to be more welcoming to the younger generation
    Be open to discussing their ideas instead of dismissing them immediately
    Provide succession planning for your board instead of rotating members from one position to another creating roadblocks for other leaders to develop
6. 
   We also discussed how to handle pastors unwilling to sign the pilgrim’s application and the best idea offered from the floor was for the Secretariat SD to talk with the pastor about their concerns signing the application. We were challenged to look at our secretariat members to see if we have a portion rotate off along with term limits in our bylaws.