Fr. Steve Rukavina told me of his unorthodox route to being and serving as pastor. In his diocese, the plan was that a newly ordained priest would serve as a parochial vicar at various parishes for ten years to learn the ropes, then they would be made a pastor of a small parish. But due to a shortage of priests, after just two years, he was made a pastor. Six years later, he was made pastor of the largest parish in the diocese, just 8 years out of seminary.

Fr. Steve was graced with a wonderful insight. He realized that as the pastor of a large parish he had spiritual power and temporal power. He also realized that he was drawn to the temporal power because it was more tangible. As the CEO of the parish he could make changes and see immediate results. But he knew that as pastor he was meant to be the spiritual leader.

Fr. Steve made a conscious decision to move his temporal duties over to members of his staff so he could focus on being a spiritual leader. To his surprise, when he focused his energy on being the spiritual leader fo the parish, he discovered he has more effective.

About a month later in another diocese I visited an intriguing parish. The parish had raised over a million dollars for a designated building project. With 100% of the cash on hand, they asked the diocese to approve them going ahead. The diocese said, “Your finances are a mess. We don’t know how you’re going from week to week. Not only will we not approve the construction, we will freeze the money raised so you won’t spend it on something else.

The parishioners absolutely raved to me about what a wonderful spiritual leader their pastor is, but admitted he was a poor CEO. Since arriving at the parish, he had ever called a pastoral council together, the finance council did meet, but they would always agree with whatever Father wanted and Father always wanted to say yes to everything.

Two parishioners who were successful businessmen decided to get involved. One said he’d take charge of the parish council while the other headed the pastoral council. One of them told me, “Father is a great spiritual leader, but a lousy manager. That’s great, because we can help. If it was the other way around, there’s nothing we could do.”

They did turn it around. They got the finances under control. They hired a business manager to work with Father, They wanted Father to set the directions, to tell them of his dreams for the parish and their facilities.  Then they would figure out how to make them happen.

The diocese was so impressed by the positive changes at the parish that they started pointing to the parish as a model of how others should be run. It was a very different path from what Fr. Steve experienced, but the same result was to let the pastor focus on being the spiritual leader while letting staff and parishioner take care of the temporal needs of the parish. It’s really just a matter of letting people do what they do best.