Pastor Transition

I served as pastor of St. Catherine’s from July 1, 2010 – June 30, 2015. Previous to this assignment, but not immediately so, I had been an interim director/pastor for 4 months and a pastor for 1 year at two other Newman centers/campus ministries, in addition to parochial assignments. I left St. Catherine’s to become pastor regular (i.e., non-Newman center/campus ministry) at a parish.

As of this writing, there has only been one meeting of the Parish Catalyst Millennial Discipleship Learning Community. The greatest asset of that first meeting was three days with my successor to work on nothing but St. Catherine’s. Part of the value was simply a to do a somewhat structured brain-dump of what had occurred in my tenure, with important people, etc. and to give him an overview of the community. With him able to ask questions right away, it helped me to structure my thoughts as to what was helpful and what was extraneous. The other value, which came directly from the content of the presentations, was to look strategically into the future. We both came away excited, I with his fresh ideas and he feeling like he wasn’t going in blind and ignorant.

This meeting was happily right before my successor’s one and only visit to the community in May before arriving as pastor in July. Although we are members of the same religious order, those days allowed us to get to know one another focusing on a common ministry concern. The result was that I was genuinely excited to introduce him to people I cared about. I think him having some background, allowed him to come with more of a sense of how he could best serve and build on what I was leaving behind.

By: Fr. Carl Schlichte, OP, pastor “emeritus,” St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Newman Center, Salt Lake City, UT