As an Assistant for Mission Partner Formation, your role bridges institutional mission and personal vocational journeys. Your effectiveness depends on specific attitudes, skills, and approaches to key responsibilities.
Core Attitudes
- Deep conviction about collaboration as essential to mission, not merely pragmatic
- Recognition that the Ignatian charism can be authentically lived through different vocations
- Openness to and curiosity about how the Spirit works differently in each person and communally, within and across ministries
- Appreciation for the complementarity of different vocations in mission
- Patience with the gradual nature of formation processes
- Willingness to learn from and with partners
- Being on the journey oneself (vulnerability, freedom, prayerful, discerning, open to be transformed – even willingness to share this appropriately)
- Value magnanimity - the small in the large, with persistence and capacity to manage creative tensions
Essential Skills
- Active listening and accompaniment capabilities
- Ability to recognize and nurture vocational callings
- Cross-sector coordination and network building
- Program design and implementation
- Knowledge and understanding of the spiritual exercises and Ignatian discernment processes and how to integrate secular tools
- Basic understanding of adult learning principles
- Understanding of group dynamics
- Workshop facilitation that models collaboration rather than lecture-style teaching
- Capacity to move dynamically across different apostolic sectors
- Communication skills to bring attention to the nature, value and impact of mission partner formation
Key Tasks
- Collaborate with apostolic sector delegates to ensure coherent formation approaches
- Build networks among mission partners
- Support Directors of Work in fostering cura personalis and mission awareness
- Create opportunities for cross-sector learning and solidarity
- Design and coordinate formation programs across different levels (introductory to advanced)
- Identify and value seemingly small starting points
- Develop and ensure effective communications to support formation progress
- Curate and contextualize formation resources
- Facilitate workshops and formation experiences
- Accompany individuals and groups in their formation journey
- Evaluate and adapt formation programs based on feedback and facilitator discernment, practical contextual realities.
- Stay connected with other Formation Assistants for mutual support and learning
Your work involves both strategic and practical elements. Strategically, you help develop comprehensive formation plans that align with provincial priorities and institutional needs. Practically, you ensure quality implementation through careful program design, resource development, and direct accompaniment.
Building relationships
Building relationships is central to your role. You'll work closely with:
- Directors of Work to understand local formation needs
- Apostolic sector delegates to coordinate sector-specific formation
- Other Formation Assistants to share resources and best practices
- Mission partners themselves to understand their formation journey
- Provincial leadership to align formation with broader mission priorities
Remember that formation is ultimately about transformation - helping people discover and deepen their personal connection to the mission. Your role is to create spaces and opportunities for this transformation while respecting each person's unique journey. Success often comes through balancing structured programs with flexibility for individual paths, always keeping sight of the ultimate goal: enabling fuller participation in the shared mission.
