Bishop shares benefits of Servant Leadership

By Nancy Spencer, The Delphos Herald
Published:  Wednesday, April 30, 2008 (2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Bishop Albert Ottenweller, long-time pastor and associate pastor at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church and co-founder of the Servant Leadership Center in Toledo with Sr. Nancy Westmyer, addresses attendees at a special dinner to support the center.DELPHOS — Bishop Albert Ottenweller was in Delphos Tuesday at the Knights of Columbus hall to garner support for his Servant Leadership Center in Toledo.
Ottenweller served St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church  for more than 25 years and started the center in Toledo with Sr. Nancy Westmyer as a way for people to look inside themselves and see they are special because they are a child of God and to find their gifts and talents. They are then taught to use these blessings to change the way they lead, therefore changing their community and, ultimately, the world.
“Servant Leadership is a way of life,” Sr. Nancy said Tuesday. “It taps in to the hunger we have for justice and our desire for a better world. It helps us explore our gifts and our passion God has put inside of us so we can use it to better the world.”
Ottenweller spoke to the more than 60 people in attendance and thanked them for showing him how to lead.
“The people in Delphos were a gift from God,” he began. “You all taught me how to lead gracefully. You taught me what it meant to be a shepherd. Now it’s time for you to go down inside yourselves and find those talents and passion. It doesn’t stay there. You turn your conviction into action. Delphos won’t stay such a nice place unless you do that. The other troubled world will come crashing into Delphos and you won’t be able to do what you want. The whole world is waiting to be redeemed. Who are you going to leave to do it? We have a whole lot of good people who do nothing.”
Ottenweller and Sr. Nancy are now working to bring a satellite of the Servant Leadership Center to Delphos. According to them, the program is not just for Catholics.
“This is an ecumenical process; anyone is welcome. It’s not just for some. That in itself tends to be very enriching. Different relationships expose us to how others view things and we can all benefit from that,” Sr. Nancy said.
St. John’s Pastoral Associate Trina Shultz has been through the program and shared the changes she found within herself.
“I have discovered a lot about myself and how to bring out what I have to give,” Shultz said. “We all have gifts and people should be treated with dignity and respect and we should help those who are marginalized. This program opens your eyes to see things in a different way.”
“Most of the world is a hierarchy which always leaves someone at the bottom. How do we change that? We need to come together as a community to change things in a non-violent way.”
The program is facilitated in three sections. The first section deals with looking inside oneself as the beloved of God, realizing the dream of God for each and looking at how our current societal system fosters inequity and injustice and how people are complicit in keeping that system in place.
The second section calls for participants to be a community “as a people” and making a commitment to make a difference. It also examines “the abundant” or “good” life and how “we manage our resources such as time, money and the earth and how power is used, misused, given inappropriately and taken inappropriately,” Sr. Nancy explained.
The final section addresses the discernment of gifts and the passion that motivates. It asks the question, “What is this challenging me to do or be?”, according to Sr. Nancy.
The pair hope the program is in place by fall and needs just 8-12 people to start. The first group will be facilitated by Sr. Nancy; she hopes in time, a local facilitator will step forward.

1 Reader Response to “Bishop shares benefits of Servant Leadership”

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  1. #1 — Added 2 months, 2 weeks ago

    The program sounds awesome and is just what we need in the church today! Bishop and Sister are such a blessing to so many!

    Posted on May 1, 2008 at 2:05 pm by Rev. Sandra Kohorst Dennis