A year ago, the staff and trustee-directors of Mercy Ministry Companions started the year with a joint gathering to begin the identification of the strategic priorities of the organisation.
We revisited our mission, vision and values and reflected on the diversity of services the ministry family of MMC provides. Our strategic priorities need to support these. We exist as an enabling body, to encourage the flourishing of the ministries. And we exist as an accountability body within the Catholic Church, to ensure MMC and the ministries conduct themselves in a way that is consistent with the gospel message of Jesus and the teachings of the Church.
At the 2024 MMC conference, Sheila Curran RSM alerted us to the need for ministries to avoid getting caught by corporate ways of seeing and being. She reminded us that those we serve are not ‘customers’ but rather are fellow human beings – companions really – journeying through life just as we are. So, it might seem a little jarring to realise that we now have Strategic Priorities for MMC – how will these impact on our seeing and being?
In the book of Genesis, the quite lengthy tale of the life of Joseph, who is one of Jacob’s twelve sons, includes a period where he finds himself in the service of Pharaoh. Joseph has a series of dreams that predict seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. In his era, dreams were taken seriously, so Joseph found himself planning and executing a strategy to save the people from the devastation of hunger and death. It’s an interesting story because it might be one of the first recorded accounts of a strategic plan. Among Joseph’s strategies was to construct facilities to store grain, sufficient to feed the cities of Egypt for seven years of famine. He was the steward with overall responsibility to ensure everyone survived the famine.
We are not endeavouring to guide MMC through seven years of famine (we hope!), but we are also stewards, doing what we can to ensure a fruitful and sustainable future for MMC. Remembering that the Catholic Church is already 2000 years old, we are charged with ensuring MMC can make its own effective contribution to the reign of God in our own era.
To develop our priorities, over many months we reviewed and revised our ideas. We also sought the input of the ministries, knowing MMC’s strategic priorities needed to make sense to them and to complement their own strategic initiatives.
We now have a finished product, accessible via this link spanning 2025-2027.
Catherine McAuley, whose ability to read the signs of her times and effectively respond to needs she saw was exceptional, always looked ahead to see how she could best contribute to the ongoing development of new foundations. Her comment: You should remember that not to go forward is to go back, is insightful. MMC has had a busy first three years, but we mustn’t ever sit still. Our world keeps changing and by identifying needs and opportunities to serve carefully, we are able to ensure we ‘go forward’ in the right direction.
It’s important to note that we have Strategic Priorities, not a Strategic Plan. Planning might come later, but we need to know where our focus must be to be effective stewards of ministries. A quick glance over the priorities above will show you that most focus on people, faith and relationships, while some deal with the resourcing and legal matters that concern all modern-day organisations.
We are pleased to share the Mercy Ministry Companions Strategic Priorities 2025-27 with you. They will guide us as we undertake our governance responsibilities and will help you to understand where our focus will be.
I invite you to ponder the six priorities we have set, alongside those of your ministry and alongside your personal priorities for how you are serving within your ministry.
For all of us, having priorities is about identifying what we want our legacy as an individual and an organisation to be. What impact do we want to make? How do we want to contribute to the reign of God in our time and place? For organisations underpinned by Christian faith, our way of seeing and being will be front and centre of how we conduct ourselves every day, how we make decisions, and how we develop and maintain relationships with everyone we encounter. Worth pondering as we get underway in a new year!
We wish each ministry a fruitful year in 2025!
Carmel Ross, Trustee Director