A Fond Farewell from Tristan

I just finished up the last week of my summer internship here — the summer’s going by so fast! I’d like to take this last opportunity to write in the bulletin to reflect on my time here and what I’ve learned this summer.

 

First off, I’ve learned a bit about speaking and preaching. I did a short reflection video each week for the Holy Trinity website while I was here, and I had the opportunity to speak at daily Mass twice, giving Fr. Dave a break from needing to prepare a homily. I still have much to learn, but being able to get into a routine of speaking and the bit of extra practice has made me far more confident in public speaking.

 
Some of that is due to Fr. Dave’s mentoring, and some is due to weekly homily planning meetings I’ve been attending. Everyone at Holy Trinity wants to give you the best weekend experience possible, so each week there’s a meeting to help whoever is preaching that weekend plan their homily, and so I’ve been able to incorporate some of the advice they’ve given each other into my own
preparations.


Another aspect where I’ve done a lot of learning has been in pastoral leadership. Fr. Dave takes properly administrating the parish very seriously and administration was probably the part of priesthood I most dreaded when I entered seminary. Over the summer he’s had me observing meetings in many different contexts and I’ve been able to pay attention to both the content of the meeting as well as his role, and as that sort of thing becomes a little more familiar, it become a little less frightening.
 
Fr. Dave also had me read a variety of different books on leadership and how to be a pastor, and those have given me an entirely new perspective on the meaning of leading a parish towards intentional discipleship in Jesus Christ. Two important aspects of pastoral leadership that I have a much greater appreciation for are the need to delegate responsibility through community involvement as well as ensuring open lines of communication both between staff members as well as between the parish and all the parishioners.


Finally, I’ve learned about some of the simple reasons that Holy Trinity is such a vibrant parish. The first is the focus on making each weekend special. As I mentioned earlier, there is a weekly homily planning meeting, but in addition to that, they also debrief the previous weekend. This is done to identify any mistakes or simply note where things could have gone better, always striving to improve.
 
This parish also has a culture that emphasizes welcome and what I like to call “radical availability”: the readiness to drop everything to help out someone else whenever the need arises. I’ve learned this all from Fr. Dave, Fr. Hans, the parish staff, and particularly all of you.


Thank you from the bottom of my heart; I’ve had a marvelous experience at Holy Trinity this summer and the lessons I’ve learned I will remember for the rest of my life.