The Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

by Sister Virginia Herbers, A.S.C.J.

In thinking about my community’s approach to vocational inquiries, I realize the value of articulating my own philosophy of vocation ministry even before explaining our method. Our community has made a strong communal commitment to vocation ministry by appointing a full-time vocation director, as well as engaging each of our sisters in a variety of vocation events and initiatives. Responding to inquiries is my responsibility, and my approach has four basic principles:

1.   Know the target population.
2.   Treat each person with reverence.
3.   Know the ministry and its boundaries.
4.   Make deliberate choices.

First, a word about the target population. The vast majority of our inquirers are in their 20s and 30s. They contact us through multiple channels—web-matching sites (a shout-out to NRVC’s VISION and VocationMatch.com), our community’s website (www.ascjus.org), social media pages (mostly Facebook and Twitter), and through direct email. Rare is the inquiry that originally comes via phone or print material. Not so rare is the personal contact through one of our community members or through my meeting a women in person somewhere. I see these personal contacts as our best-case scenarios—the strongest type of initial contact. But since the overwhelming majority of our initial inquiries come through digital sources, maintaining a vibrant presence online is of vital importance to the ministry. Tweeting and posting may not seem like a method of maintaining contact, but I assure you we have found it essential!

Another aspect of knowing our target population is realizing what my communication comfort zone is and what theirs might be. As with any ministry, if I remain in my own comfort zone to minister to the needs of others, it might make me happier, but it will likely not be ministering in the most coherent or effective way for those considering religious life. I admit that it is an effort for me to maintain our social media accounts—tweeting does not come naturally to me—but it is as natural a part of a 20-something’s life as walking down the street, so it behooves me to put aside my own preferences if I want to truly meet inquirers where they are.

That being said, social media has its limits when it comes to vocational discernment, so another piece of knowing our audience is knowing when it is time to have a more personal, real-time meeting, in-person or via phone, Skype, or Facetime. Being attentive to the incarnational nature of relationship requires that emailing and texting eventually yield to person-to-person conversation.

This leads to my second principle: treat discerners (the target population or audience) with reverence. When I receive an inquiry, do I treat it as another item on my to-do list, adding it to my pending email and need-to-make phone calls? Or do I receive it as a person who has asked for my help and accompaniment on a journey led by the Holy Spirit? Because each contact represents a person’s vocational journey, I insist on replying to their inquiry within no more than one week of receiving it. My first response is usually email, followed soon after by a phone call if the person has provided a number. If she has provided a social media address, I learn more about her there before contacting her. If I don’t receive any response, I follow-up once more about two weeks later. If she still hasn’t responded, I let the connection go, with a promise to carry her in our community prayer.

In my experience, about 50 percent of the inquiries I receive end up in this last category; about 35 percent respond and engage in an initial conversation; and only about 15 percent end up maintaining contact and moving on to attend one of our discernment events (retreat, live-in experience, day of prayer, or ministry shadowing). Once a relationship has been established (i.e., we’ve had at least one real-time conversation, and it’s the discerner’s intention to continue) I add the person to our vocation email list and make sure I keep in contact with her about our upcoming events and vocation opportunities. If six months go by without hearing any further response from her, I reach out again with a call, and if I still don’t receive a response, I make the assumption that she would prefer to drop contact, and I oblige. After a year’s worth of sustained non-contact, I remove her from our email list.

One aspect of reverencing the discerner is persevering enough to allow for the demands of her busy schedule and ongoing discernment, but also not being so persistent as to become pesky. My guiding question when it comes to whether to continue the effort to stay in touch is: “Why—and for whose benefit?” That question keeps me honest, and the answer indicates pretty clearly what I need to do!

Thirdly: I need to know my ministry and its boundaries. As a vocation director I am called to accompany inquiring women on their discernment journey. So the first question is whether or not this person feels called to religious life. This is typically the topic of conversation the first time I speak with someone. In listening to her story and trying to help her discern how God is leading, I find that offering a sense of what distinguishes one community from another (charism, mission, spirituality, etc.) is also helpful. If, in the course of our conversations, it becomes apparent that although it seems she has a religious vocation, my community would not be a good match, I am a firm believer in expressing that directly, clearly, honestly, and compassionately, and recommending other communities to contact. Recognizing my own biases and projections is vital in order to ensure that I am not interfering with God’s movements in the person’s life—I don’t endorse “cutting people loose” too early in the relationship—but neither can I, if I truly believe a woman and the community would be an ill-fit, treat the person like a commodity simply to benefit our desire for an increase in new members. Rather I believe God’s job is to call someone to the consecrated life and to a particular community. My job is to help a woman discern how God might be speaking and moving, and to convey the identity of my own religious community in order to facilitate her vocational discernment.

Lastly, in responding to inquiries, each community and each vocation director must make choices. How restrictive is our screening process for those who make inquiries? Do we engage every inquirer equally—whether that person reaches us through email, personal contact, or through a Facebook “like”? What are the possibilities as well as the non-negotiables for my community? For example, do we have an age restriction? Would we accept undocumented persons? Can we be flexible in ministry assignments and formation programs? Is there a “standard pathway” for engaging with the community, or is that decided on a case-by-case basis? How long do we maintain contact with someone without receiving a response? Is the community willing to pay for a discerner’s travel to visit in person? Does the community feel an in-person meeting is important enough for the vocation director to visit each inquirer? These are but a sampling of the questions that will inform and direct the way a community responds to inquiries and nurtures contacts.

And … to end where we began, the process a community chooses will be the ministerial expression of it own philosophy of vocation ministry. Far from being dry abstractions, this philosophy will hopefully make manifest the Way, the Truth, and the Life of vocation ministry: Jesus Christ himself.

Society of the Divine Word

by Len Uhal

A quick query of our candidate database shows that we entered 1,557 “new names,” as we call them, over the last five years from 25 different sources, and we currently have 458 “active names.” This is an average of 311 new names a year, and it does not count the hundreds of names we did not add to the database because an inquirer did not meet our admission criteria based on age, health, faith affiliation, residency, or another standard.

Where do these names come from? What do we do with them? How do we organize them? Who follows-up and responds to them? Who provides information and nurtures them? Who develops a relationship with them to assist them in their discernment? How do we keep sufficient and friendly contact with them without being overbearing or high pressured? These are all good questions, and there are probably more.

For the SVDs the process begins with a referral or inquiry to our vocation office from a multitude of different sources. As noted above, we received inquiries from 25 different sources in the last several years. These include inquiries from our free and paid print or online advertisements in VISION, OYE, Guide to Religious Ministries, Facebook, VocationMatch.com, Vocations Placement Services, various program booklets, and other magazines, websites, and periodicals. Our sources of new names include our Search Engine Marketing (SEM) advertising, direct referrals from Divine Word Missionary brothers and priests, referrals from current or former men in formation, hits to our website, referrals from benefactors, and of course contacts received through our vocation team’s promotion activities, such as visiting parishes, giving presentations, hosting retreats, visiting college campuses, attending vocation fairs, taking part in Catholic youth conferences, etc.

Our job as a vocation team—which consists of three SVD priests, an SVD brother, an office assistant and me—is to regularly put ourselves in front of young people to invite and encourage them to consider a religious vocation. When someone says, “I’m interested in learning more,” we collect the man’s contact information and enter it into our database, which is an Excel spreadsheet with many fields to track things like initial contact, Come and See visits, and even the formal application process if a candidate gets to that point.

Once one of our vocation directors obtains a new name, we receive a phone call in the office from an inquirer, or we receive a name from a referral source (like VISION, for example), our office assistant enters the person’s information into the database and immediately sends an initial letter and mails a small packet of information to the inquirer. If one of our vocation directors obtained the new name, he almost always walks with that candidate through the entire process—from initial phone calls and information to discernment and possible application. If the new name was a “cold referral” from a phone call to the office or from a referral source like Vocations Placement Services, I assign a vocation director to the candidate based on the state where the candidates lives and the geographical area that each vocation director covers.

Within seven to ten days after our office assistant mails the packet of information, a vocation director reaches out to contact the candidate. As we all know, this can sometimes be difficult with cold referrals. We telephone them, we e-mail them, and we sometimes reach out through Facebook. While some candidates reply quickly, much of the time we struggle to connect one-on-one with our cold referrals. The men we meet at vocation fairs and through personal contact are much easier to engage in conversation, but we do not give up on the cold referrals—some of the ones from the past are active members of our Society today!

We remain persistent in trying to make contact with all of our referrals. In addition to phone calls and e-mails, we try to engage our candidates through social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. With these and with our monthly e-newsletter, we try to drive our candidates to our website to learn more about us even though they may not want to reply to an e-mail or phone call. Quarterly we send our mission magazine to them, a four-color periodical that highlights our ministries around the world. We also send birthday and Christmas cards to candidates, and this year we even sent Easter cards. For three to four years—before we sent the formal initial information packet—I personally hand-wrote a note on a greeting card to every cold referral. The thought was that maybe the personal touch would increase our ability to connect with the young man. Over the years we learned that there was no significant difference or likelihood that a person who received a handwritten note would reply to phone calls or e-mails any more than someone who did not. We abandoned that time-consuming practice.

All of the action steps above are meant to provide information to our candidates about our community and hopefully encourage them to begin a conversation with us. Once we make direct contact with a candidate via phone calls, text messages, e-mail, Skype, Facebook or whatever platform, our goal is to help them in their discernment. We engage them in many conversations about religious life and hope that we can eventually meet with them in person. After one or more meetings with candidates, we invite them for a Come and See visit. Sometimes it takes multiple visits and several months or even years for a candidate to decide to make an application to our community—or decide that religious life is not for them or our community is not the right fit for them. However all of the activities above help us and the candidate come to an informed decision.

Unfortunately we are not able to connect personally with all candidates. In fact we are unable to make any contact with most of our cold referrals. Despite all our efforts we never speak directly with the majority of them. Generally we keep them on our active list for six months or so. We try to make several phone calls and e-mail attempts as well as send them a few e-newsletters, a couple mission magazines, and maybe a birthday card. In the end, if they never respond, we drop them from our active list, but they remain in our database in case we hear from them a few months or a couple years down the road, which has happened more than once.

While we have tweaked the process over the years and have tried many different advertising and vocation promotion events, our method of working with our candidates has been a blessing for our Society in the United States. In the last 14 years, 640 candidates participated in a Come and See visit, 270 men entered initial formation with us and 88 professed First Vows as Divine Word Missionaries in the USA after completing our novitiate program. Having a systematic and well-organized vocation promotion plan in place is crucial to successful vocation ministry.

School Sisters of Notre Dame

by Sister Nancy Gilchriest, S.S.N.D.

“As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, ‘Follow me.’
“And he got up and followed him.”

—Matthew 9: 9 – 13

Recognizing that God does the inviting, the School Sisters of Notre Dame Vocation Team responds to an inquirer in the following fashion. If the query arrives by email, the SSND Vocation Director responds in a timely manner, sending information that is requested and answering any general questions that are asked. Having the director be the first point of contact helps ensure that a response is given within five days of the request. If the individual asks that a vocation minister contact her, then the director arranges a mutually convenient time for them to meet, either in person or by phone. This conversation is the first step in allowing the woman to get to know the SSNDs, and vice versa.

Depending on the geographic location of the inquirer, the SSND vocation director might ask one of the five sisters on the Vocation Team to continue the conversation in order to foster this relationship of understanding the mystery of what happens when “Jesus passes by.”

If the inquirer comes directly to a School Sister of Notre Dame, that sister contacts the director and a particular vocation minister becomes the main contact for that person.

The community is involved with special events, such as Busy Persons’ Retreats and diocesan vocation events which could elicit interest in religious life. We always have a contact information sheet at events so women can sign up to continue the conversation. The sheets are labeled “Would you like more information about religious life? Would you like to be contacted by an SSND vocation person?” In addition each SSND vocation minister has business cards to distribute when and wherever it is appropriate.

The process continues with a timeframe of approximately three weeks between points of contact. This gives the inquirer the space and the grace needed to move to an understanding of her call. For those who do not respond to us, we’ll be in touch twice over a six-week period before discontinuing contact, and our last communication lets her know that unless we hear from her, we’ll stop contacting her.

For a woman who does stay in touch with us, as time passes, we will invite her to meet with other SSNDs, volunteer at an SSND ministry, or participate in particular events, allowing the relationship between her and the School Sisters to deepen. The vocation team member is the link connecting the two. In prayerful support and mutual conversation, the vocation team member companions the individual as she discerns God’s invitation to “follow me.”

Sister Virginia Herbers, A.S.C.J. serves the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in leadership, having worked in vocation and formation ministry.

Len Uhal is the national vocation director for Divine Word Missionaries. He discerned with the SVDs and is now married with children.

Sister Nancy Gilchriest, S.S.N.D. is director of the North American Vocation Team for the School Sisters of Notre Dame.