Future pastors get down to business at workshops on management skills

Published: 2006-08-31

WILMINGTON, Del. (CNS) -- Chris Hanley owned his own cleaning and landscaping business in Maine for five years, and he managed a greenhouse in North Plainfield, N.J., for about a year. He described his managerial style as "brash." "When I was in business, I hired workers. As long as they got the job done, I didn't care" about their personalities, said Hanley, a third-year seminarian for the Diocese of Wilmington, studying at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore. That approach will not work in his next administrative job -- pastor of a Catholic parish -- Hanley learned this summer at a series of workshops on financial and human-resource management in parishes today. The workshops were designed to help future priests understand the challenges today's pastor faces in management and administration, according to St. Mary's, where the sessions were held. Hanley said he learned that a good staff was integral to the success of a parish and that viewing employees merely as workers won't serve him well when he takes over his own parish.

Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .