LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD
Evaluate, Brainstorm, and then Act
By: Mary McLarry, SSMN
Tis is a new feature highlighting an article from a past issue of Pastoral Music magazine and offering the opportunity to reflect on how the issues raised therein might invite you to deepen your ministry moving forward.
Looking Back Tis issue’s article, “Evaluate, Brainstorm, and then Act,” appeared in a 1982 issue of Pastoral Music and was written by Mary McLarry, SSMN, then Director of Liturgy and Music at St. Peter the Apostle Parish in Fort Worth, Texas and Diocesan Director of Music in Fort Worth.
Looking Forward As you read this article, think about possible applications to your current ministry as a pastoral musician. How is this topic relevant to pastoral ministry today? What practical suggestion(s) might you carry forward into your future ministry? Is there an idea or insight that particularly resonates with you or challenges you?
Email your reflections to
NPMsing@npm.org. Responses will be included in a future issue.
T
uesday evening (or Monday or whenever) the parish liturgy committee holds its regular monthly planning meeting. All the members
have done their homework -read the scriptures of the Sundays to be covered, pondered ways to "enflesh" the Word through their various ministries . . . environment, mu sic, proclaiming. And so you settle down to share and shape your ideas in service of the community's prayer.
But what if a meeting or part of sev eral meetings were spent squinting your collective eye to go beyond details to the broad outline of what the community is about when it comes to Sunday wor ship? Specifically, what if, before going into the planning of the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time or the feast of the Assumption, for example, you examined the fundamental movements of com munal worship -gathering, listening, responding- as experienced by your community last Sunday?
For the process to be fruitful, it will help to set
some ground rules: 1. Stay within one topic: gathering or listening or responding; do not start on one and then spill over into an other.
2. Begin with simple questions - where? who? what? or those that can be answered "yes" or no."
3. Ten ask of the above answers "why?" or "why not?".
(Note: In this section (#1-#3) no solu tions are allowed. It is better to get as complete a picture as possible of the reality the community experienced be fore attempting answers. Otherwise, you may end up with bandaids instead of cures.)
Here are some starters for this techni que:
Gathering: Where did it begin? (Parking lot, sidewalk, steps of church, vesti bule, pews?) What were the signs that gathering was happening? What were the signs that
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