Formation for BEC leaders and core team

Once again after three years, 120 participants comprising of new BEC Leaders with their Core Teams of the Taiping Catholic Church came together for a day’s formation on how to animate and activate their BECs.

May 16, 2014

TAIPING: Once again after three years, 120 participants comprising of new BEC Leaders with their Core Teams of the Taiping Catholic Church came together for a day’s formation on how to animate and activate their BECs. Lazarus Jonathan the Chairperson of the Diocesan BECAFT (BEC Animating & Formation Team) conducted the sessions.

In their group discussions, the participants shared on how they felt about a happy parish priest. According to the parish priest, the parish is alive because he could get good helpers to come forward from his many committees and organizations. Like the early church, we, the parishioners are to take an active part in fulfilling the task which Christ gave us to create a sense of ‘co-responsibility’ through the BECs.

Next, they identified the type of leadership that is conducive for community building.

The four types of leaderships are:

-- Highly efficient leader: The leader is full of talent. He is a good speaker, highly intelligent, good at designing plans. He has the confidence and the energy to attain his objectives. He plans thoroughly what others have to do and instructs them to do what he wants them to do. All think highly of him. They praise him for his wisdom and energy. When others do not follow and carry out his instructions, he gets very upset. The negative outcome of such a leader is when he resigns or his term of office ends, all activities end too. There are no opportunities for new leaders to emerge.

--Hyper active leader: This type of leader seeks continual activities. Importance will be given to short-term, temporary and popular programmes rather than to long-term and difficult tasks. This leader will not find time to build relationships with the people. He will be by himself. He does not take the initiative to train or to motivate. The danger is the members will not find sufficient opportunity to develop their talents. Hence new leaders may not emerge.

-- Hotchpotch leader: This leader will not have any plan or any order. This kind of leader just catches whatever fad or fashion that is passing and tries it out. Very soon, the current project is abandoned for something else. No work will be fully carried out. The members will find it very difficult to work with him. Members may stop attending as there is disorder and lack of planning.
-- The collaborative team leader: This type of leader, will carefully listen to the ideas of others. As he does his research, study and findings, he will share the same at every stage with the members of his group. He wants all to apply their mind and go through the thinking process along with him. He accepts the fact that God has given various talents to all. He is aware that when real discussions and consultation takes place, the decisions will be of a very high quality and useful to all. He will be reluctant to use his power or place emphasis on his “office”.

In BECs, PPCs, and Ministries, what kind of leadership should we have? Obviously, the style of leadership of Jesus, which we find in the Gospels tallies with the description of leadership that we find in the fourth type of collaborative leadership. When Jesus wanted to begin the greatest plan of building the “Kingdom” of God here on earth, he opted for and followed this style of leadership with the apostles, disciples, women and other groups of people. We read the characteristics of His style of leadership in the Gospels. We also perceive in the early Church, a similar style of leadership. We hope and pray that this new style of leadership will be a lived reality in our BECs, PPCs, Parishes and ministries. Matt 23:8-10

The leaders were then posed with real life moments which they faced as challenging to them. The sessions ended with a run-through on how to facilitate the monthly reflection papers.

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