How mission experts can guide our prophetic voice

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” I first learnt about the 15^th century poet Matsuo Basho whilst working at Catholic Health Australia almost 20 years ago. At the time I was challenged to think deeply about ‘seeking what they sought’. This challenge related to the extraordinary Religious orders that pioneered and founded Catholic healthcare in Australia, and how they were to always remain faithful to ‘seek what they sought’.

We all know they sought to bring the love of God to people through their ministries of healing. Today, most of us use the term ‘the healing ministry of Jesus’. So, as I reflect on what I have seen over the last 20 years, one area that has emerged as requiring deeper thought across our the Boards of our members, is how our skills matrix is used in our recruitment processes. Specifically for recruiting mission experts to Boards today and into the future.

One common response to recruiting to our Boards has been, to ensure for as long as possible we have a Religious on the Board. This is essential, and a powerful symbol of who are and what we stand for. It is clear to me that we need to give more thought to how we recruit to our Boards today and into the future to ensure the prophetic voice remains at the table. So, therefore, to this, Boards need to turn their minds to recruiting for mission experts be they lay or religious. Some recent work I did with a group of Boards, indicated that over 60 per cent of their Boards had no mission expert presence on their Board.

Over the last few years, I have raised this issue in various settings, and sometimes a common response is, it is everyone’s job on the Board to be a mission expert. This might be true in theory, but we recruit for areas of expertise such as finance, human resources and cybersecurity “et al”. So too must we recruit for mission experts that understand the need for systematic embedding of mission and formation within organisational structures.

This is a complex and sacred responsibility we need to address. One of the first books I read when I started my role at Catholic Health Australia long ago, was by a group of Sisters, who had turned their minds to thinking about handing over their ministries. It focused on ‘the in between years’. We are now almost at the end of the ‘in between years’. So, the question now is, are we still seeking what they sought? Or are we primarily driven by market forces and economic rationalism? And the crucial question is, how to hold the tensions between the two?

May the Boards of our ministries faithfully continue to discern these important questions, and discuss their skills matrix informed by the maxim ‘seeking what they sought’.