School of Leaders
Check out the Working Groups on the following Organizational Chart and contact a Secretariat member if interested in participating. We need many good men and women to serve!!!

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Organizational Chart

Orlando Cursillo Org Chart

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November 19, 2011

A “Call for Pescadores” from the School of Leaders

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

At the Fourth Day Reunion on Saturday, November 12th, we had our first breakout session to discuss our plans for expanding the focus of our School of Leaders. Simply put, we had an enthusiastic response from those who attended.

As you may know, we (Michael Willems and John Edmead) are the Secretariat Members responsible for School of Leaders. We have taken a close look at what a School of Leaders should be, particularly in our diocese. Through on the job experience in our most recent School of Leaders sessions, through our analysis of the needs for our movement here in Orlando and through our study of the Leader’s Manual and other Cursillo literature, here is what we found.

In the past our movement has had its ups and downs. Our movement was devastated by hurricanes, saw declining numbers of candidates (both before and after the hurricanes), some ultreyas stopped meeting and, in some areas of the diocese, the movement was barely alive. We are starting to fill our weekends again and we want that to continue as we seek to evangelize our environments. We need for our movement to be the best it can be in our diocese. We want our Ultreyas to be strong and for all our babe chicks to be given the best opportunity to experience real group reunion.

The School of Leaders concept was originally based, in large part, upon the need for leaders in our Fourth Day Community to join forces to serve the needs of the movement in order to bring Cursillo to a diocese in the first place (in some instances), to give it life, to sustain it, and to make it all that the Cursillo movement can be in that particular diocese. Part of this includes education in the methods and fundamentals of Cursillo, but only part. A significant portion of what the School of Leaders was intended to do, was to be a support organization where the Leaders come together (similar to a school of fish). In fact, the Leader’s Manual states that the School of Leaders is to the Ultreya what the team is to the Three Day Weekend. The Cursillo team provides the labor, the prayers and the interactions that allows the Holy Spirit to touch each candidate uniquely during the Three Days. Along those lines, in the paragraphs below, we want to share our aspirations for expanding our School of Leaders concept so that it truly serves real needs within the movement and in doing so brings life to the movement here in Orlando in a way that will hopefully keep Cursillo alive and well for many years to come.

We are expanding the School of Leaders to allow and encourage our Cursillo leaders, both the seasoned veterans and the recent babe chicks, to serve together in various areas of real need in our movement. We will be forming “service groups” which are in actuality working group reunions that will serve the movement in our diocese in a number of areas. We are looking for “pescadores” who are willing to serve in areas of need in which they feel called to serve. Just as you were called to be a Christian Leader on Saturday night of your Cursillo weekend, you are being called serve in the School of Leaders. Let us explain this call a bit more specifically, as it may (and in many cases may not) apply to you.

If you are a “geek” with some spare time we invite you to assist us in updating and improving our records in our database, or in improving communications through email or “workgroups.” We need “geeks” to assist with website management and enhancement.

If you are a “study” person, we need help with improving the way we provide books to our candidates on weekends, including developing good lists of the “best books” as reading lists to be given to candidates.

If you are a “Piety” person, we need prayer warriors, who will do palanca for movements throughout the world, and we need to expand our prayer request capabilities.

If you want our candidates to come to our weekends fully prepared and armed with pillows, sheets, towels and other essentials and if you want to make sure that the sponsors really do what they are supposed to do as a sponsor, we need a service group to work with our Pre-Cursillo person. Bringing a person to Cursillo and helping that person walk the initial phase of his or her Fourth Day is an important task that we cannot leave to chance.

If you are a chef, a handyperson, an organizer, or the like, we need help with service groups in the area of kitchen, facilities liaison, storage shed, archiving that will help support our men’s and women’s teams and in some areas support secretariat members.

If you feel our Ultreyas need to share ideas and “cross-pollinate,” we would love to have you involved in assisting our Fourth Day secretariat members in making our Ultreyas strong and lively and in opening new Ultreyas in new parishes.

If you feel writing or reporting is your thing, we would love to make a regular newsletter, sent out electronically, a tool to make Cursillo in our diocese even better. If you are into audiovisual things, we have some ideas that could become a reality, if you want to get involved.

Music is a part of Cursillo, a very important part. Whether you are actively involved in music in Cursillo or would someday like to be involved in this area, the music service group can be for you.

If you would like to be involved in putting on days of reflection or information session as part of the spiritual or educational function of the School of Leaders, we want you.

If you have given a number of talks in Cursillo and want to help develop other leaders to become speakers on weekends, we need help in our talk mentor service group. We already have a group going through our current set of sample talks to make sure that our speakers get really good samples to work from. We need to update and improve manuals used on the weekend by the heads of setup, kitchen, and music.

These are some of the real needs that we see. We know that not everything can be done at once. We need to move deliberately and do this well. If we are all truly are open to the Holy Spirit and are willing to be his instruments, many of you may hear the call to be involved in one or more areas of the School of Leaders. It can and should be something that will fit your schedule and won’t be more than you should do.

At our breakout session, we had many people who enthusiastically responded and indicated that they would be willing to become involved. We want to extend this invitation to all the Leaders in our movement. We were all called out as leaders on Saturday night. Your leadership role may or may not involve participating in a service group with the School of Leaders. Pray about it. If you do respond with a “yes” we will all be rewarded. If you must respond “no” in order to serve the Lord elsewhere, we will all be rewarded nonetheless. Listen to the Holy Spirit, and you will receive your call wherever that may take you.

Here are the current service groups that we would like to form (in no particular order), if there is sufficient interest:

1. Books for Cursillo Weekend

2. Facilities Liaison

3. Kitchen Support

4. Database

5. Website

6. Applications (Pre-Cursillo)/Sponsor and Candidate Support and Communication

7. Music

8. Prayer Warriors/Palanca

9. Days of Reflection/Information Sessions

10. Ultreya Interaction and Support

11. Talk Mentors

12. Manual Revisions

How do you get involved? Just drop us an email with your current contact information: full name, mailing address, parish, preferable email address, and phone numbers. We need to know what area or areas you would be willing to serve.

We plan to follow up shortly after we get our initial responses to establish and organize the various service groups. You will be contacted, whether or not we will be activating a service group immediately in your area of interest. It may be that the response for certain service groups overwhelms the need. We don’t want to waste people’s valuable time, so each service group will have a practical limit to its size. Your call to serve in an area is something that you can accept or decline. If your available time is changed dramatically, you can withdraw.

All this is voluntary. You do not serve on a service group to “qualify” to serve on team. In other words, you can still serve on Cursillo teams, even if you never become part of the School of Leaders. If you serve out of love of God and love of the Cursillo movement, you will be rewarded many times over for everything that you give. We will all benefit as you help to continue to breathe life into this precious gift from God that each of us has received. This is not intended to take you from your family or from other ministries in which you are involved. We are convinced that our leaders will learn from each other and will be stronger and more united through this effort. That is why we are very excited about the possibilities!

Pray about this now and when you have discerned and are ready we want to hear from you (the sooner the better)!

Yours in Christ,

Michael Willems (mwillems@cfl.rr.com) and John Edmead (jedmead@cfl.rr.com)

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