photograph and article by Deacon Jay Albert, MM
On Saturday, March 4, our Diocese of Louisiana deacons gathered for a communal dinner and fellowship at Archdeacon Cindy Obier and her husband Bob’s home for a delightful meal and sharing time. Deacon Cindy has been planning this for some time since she has become our Archdeacon and fearless leader. We converged on their recently remodeled lovely home in Baton Rouge with great joy to see each other again.
The deacons in Baton Rouge and New Orleans are busy in their parishes and programs and don’t often meet other than official diocesan meetings which are always crammed full of events. We seldom get to just be together as deacons. It was delightful and reinvigorating. After a meal cooked and served by Cindy and Bob, we all sat down to share how things were going in our ministries and parishes. Cindy asked for input on suggestions for our upcoming deacon’s conference at the Solomon Center as well as a request for the directions we would like to see our ministry grow into.
Joe Clavijo, one of our two postulants in the diaconate process joined us and spoke about how the training in the IONA program was going. Some of us have visited the IONA program over the past few months and a couple of us are going up in the next weeks and months to support our postulants.
Our ministry is unique in that deacons are often bi-vocational and feel called by God equally to both our jobs and ministry outreach work. Our ministry is to bring the needs of the community back to our churches and engage them in these opportunities to help others in need. We have high hopes to be more visible as deacons in our diocese and explain what a deacon does and how rewarding it is. Our hopes are to grow our ministry beyond previous levels so that each parish will have at least one deacon to serve in and support the priest and the community in that parish.
Our deacons are involved in many ministries such as: Casa, Kairos prison ministry, Addiction Recovery, HIV/AIDS, Feeding, Eucharistic Visitors, Youth, and many more ministries that impact both our churches and the people of our communities. We are a supportive and nurturing group and love to share our passion for service with others.
Thank you, Cindy and Bob, for a delightful time.