More About the Loyola Pastoral Life Center
The Loyola Pastoral Life Center is a continuing education division of LIM
1985-1992: Kansas City MO -- The Institute for Pastoral Life
In 1985, bishops representing several rural and mission dioceses in the United States founded the Institute for Pastoral Life (IPL). The IPL was to address the ministry education needs within Catholic rural and mission dioceses, particularly those with little or no access to Catholic colleges, universities, and seminaries. The Institute was established in Kansas City, Missouri. While IPL addressed a wide range of ministry education needs, a major area of concentration upon which it began to focus was providing effective education for a new, evolving form of ministry: non-ordained leadership in parish communities without a resident priest pastor. This ministry leadership form or position is often, now, referred to as a parish administrator, parish director, or parish life coordinator.
Throughout its brief history, the IPL in fact had no affiliations with institutions of higher learning. In fact, IPL never chose to offer academic credits, continuing education credits, or professional credentials to its student clients, who nevertheless completed a considerable amount of work, over several Summer sessions, in ministry training classes.
For a number of reasons, in 1991 -- some directly related to a major shift in policy with regard to direct funding procedures by the Extension Society, a key financial contributor annually to the IPL, the bishops on the IPL Advisory Board recommended that the Institute become affiliated with a Catholic college or university in the United States. In January 1992, representatives of Loyola University New Orleans – Rev. Bernard Lee, S.M. and Dr. Marcel Dumestre – met with the bishops on the IPL Board and made a case for the affiliation of IPL with the Loyola Institute for Ministry (LIM). In early February of that year, Most Reverend Ricardo Ramirez, the bishop of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and chair of the IPL Advisory Board, indicated to Loyola that LIM had been selected as the most appropriate site to which to transfer the IPL. In a brief communication with LIM, he wrote,
"The committee was very much impressed by the interest shown by you in wanting the IPL in New Orleans. We concluded that your staff and you at the Institute for Ministry understand very well the intent of the IPL and have followed its brief history very carefully. We are very much influenced in our decision, moreover, by the track record of your Institute with regard to home mission dioceses in the United States. It is precisely para-professionals from that network that IPL has sought to serve. We feel very confident that your staff and you will continue the charism of the Institute for Pastoral Life."
In May 1992, Institute for Pastoral Life was dissolved as a not-for-profit corporation in Missouri. By an act of donation from the IPL Advisory Board, LIM received the tangible assets and the non-tangible assets of reputation and clientele of the IPL.
1992: The Establishment of the Loyola Pastoral Life Center (LPLC)
In November 1992, the successor to the IPL, known as the Loyola Pastoral Life Center (LPLC), began operations at Loyola University New Orleans. Since the Summer of 1993, LIM has included, during each of its Summer Sessions and during several academic year semesters, course offerings with a direct, traceable connection to the ministry education curriculum for parish life coordinators inherited by LIM from the former IPL.
1992-Today: The LPLC Today: Mission and Scope of Activities
In late 1992, Beth Fitzpatrick, O. Carm., became the Coordinator of the LPLC. Reynolds R. Ekstrom replaced her in November 1994, and remains in the coordinator position to this day. In late 1994, the mission statement of the LPLC underwent a significant revision. The current LPLC mission statement, approved in December 1994 by the director of LIM and the dean of City College, says:
The Loyola Pastoral Life Center (LPLC) is a continuing education division within the Institute for Ministry (LIM) at Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit Catholic institution. The mission and programs of the Loyola Pastoral Life Center flow directly from the mission and work of LIM. The mission of the LPLC is to provide continuing education opportunities, ministry studies programs, and spiritual enrichment for women and men involved in various aspects of the church's life and ministries. The LPLC thus furthers the mission of the church community to promote the reign of God and the primary purpose of LIM to educate persons for leadership in Christian ministries. In pursuing its important mission, the Loyola Pastoral Life Center is particularly dedicated to helping the national church, diocesan pastoral offices, and ministry leaders in local churches improve the quality of grass-roots level Christian life and ministry. The LPLC does so by providing seminars, training programs, resources, and networking opportunities, around emerging ministry issues, for these parties. In doing its work, the LPLC remains particularly attentive to the multicultural and ecumenical dimensions of the church in the United States, to smaller dioceses and Christian home missions, and to local church communities with new and emerging forms of lay pastoral leadership.
At the present moment, the LPLC reaches out actively, once again, to bishops and diocesan leaders of former IPL-affiliated dioceses and to other church-related organizations. The LPLC staff also reaches out, more extensively, to serve LIM on-campus graduates, ministry leaders and other key persons in the greater New Orleans area, LIMEX graduates, current LIMEX dioceses and students, and many others to inform them about the existence of the LPLC and to urge them to avail themselves of the LPLC programs and services already in place.