The Yeshua Catholic International Leadership Institute will offer a free webinar for ministry professionals called “You Are the Face of the Church.” The webinar will be presented Wednesday, April 10, at 1 p.m. CT by Ken Ogorek, Director of Catechesis for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and a consultant at Evangelium Consulting Group. Ken also served as recent president of the National Conference for Catechetical Leadership (NCCL), and is a well-known speaker on issues related to lay ministry, catechetics and organizational health. He will provide participants with 10 guidelines for effective ministry a...

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By Owen Phelps, Ph.D. Director, Yeshua Institute In sharing the Catholic Vision for Leading Like Jesus, we introduce people to S3 Leadership: Servant, Steward and Shepherd. It’s the way Jesus led and taught his disciples to lead. It’s the way he wants all of us to lead – at home, at work, in our communities and in our parishes. Wherever we are, all of us are called to be leaders some of the time. So learning how to Lead Like Jesus is a critical skill for every follower of Christ. When we explain Servant Leadership, we note that the essence of this approach is behaving with the heartfelt con...

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By Owen Phelps, Ph.D. Director, Yeshua Institute It started out as an idea for how my wife, Jane, and I might do something together during Lent that would help us get to know the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles better – and also to better develop the heart and mind of Jesus, which is the real purpose of Lent. Then, the more I thought about it, the more I came to think that we ought to share our idea with you. Maybe its something you want to do with your spouse or a friend or even a small group that you’re in contact with on a daily basis. Here’s the idea: Through Lent we’re going to rea...

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By Owen Phelps, Ph.D. Director, Yeshua Institute The “vitals” regarding the Catholic Church in the U.S. today are not encouraging. Indeed, I’d call them downright scary. I’m not exactly sure how I would do it -- or even what it means -- but I’m tempted to recommend that we put the church on life support. For example, what would you think if I told you that less than a third of U.S. Catholics think priests are honest or ethical? That’s what a Gallup survey near the end of 2018 discovered No, I don’t have an axe to grind. And I’m not trying to throw brickbats ...

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The homilist at the Mass closing out the unprecedented Vatican summit on protecting young people from sexual abuse told his colleagues that the church needs a coversion not unlike the Copernican revolution that occurred in the 1500s. Nicolaus Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun – a revolutionary idea in a world that took it for granted that the earth was at the center of the universe. In a story reported by Catholic News Service, Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane told the pope and other bishops gathered at the summit that the church needs the same sort of revolution in it...

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The homilist at the Mass closing out the unprecedented Vatican summit on protecting young people from sexual abuse told his colleagues that the church needs a coversion not unlike the Copernican revolution that occurred in the 1500s. Nicolaus Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun – a revolutionary idea in a world that took it for granted that the earth was at the center of the universe. In a story reported by Catholic News Service, Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane told the pope and other bishops gathered at the summit that the church needs the same sort of revolution in it...

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By Owen Phelps, Ph.D. Director, Yeshua Institute This past Saturday I was on my way to teaching a diocesan ministry formation class about Leading Like Jesus when the car’s radio blared the news: by the action of Pope Francis, former cardinal Theodore McCarrick was now no longer a priest either. In a statement issued earlier in the day in Rome, which is seven hours ahead of my local time, the Vatican said McCarrick had been dismissed from the priesthood after he was found guilty of several crimes -- including soliciting sex during confession and “sins” with minors and with adults, and “with ...

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When it comes to praying with the pope, there’s an app for that. It’s called “Click to Pray: Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network,” and Pope Francis introduced it Jan. 20 after praying the Angelus with visitors gathered in St. Peter’s Square. On the app people will find the pope’s monthly prayer intentions and requests. This month more than 4 million people have signed on to the free app. The prayer network, formerly called the Apostleship of Prayer, is a Jesuit-run outreach that has given Catholics the pope’s monthly prayer intentions since 1890.

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We believe that there is no better model for effective leadership than Jesus – and that he led as a Servant, Steward and Shepherd. That’s what we mean by S3 Leadership. At various times Pope Francis has spoken of leadership in the church in the context of servant, steward and shepherd – although we confess that we have been waiting for him to mention all three at the same time. We are still waiting. But in the meantime, he recently told bishops that they should lead as fathering shepherds, not overbearing administrators. He urged the bishops to follow the example of St. Oscar Romero, who modeled ...

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It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ [Jesus]. Phillipians 3:12 By Owen Phelps, Ph.D. Director, Yeshua Institute Whenever I think of the importance of learning – and growing – from mistakes, I think of a woman who was once on my staff whom I will call Alice because that wasn’t her name. Alice was pretty competent but she was woefully lacking in confidence. She blamed her psychologically abusive husband, whom she eventually left a...

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