Aquinas Institute of Theology, a graduate school of theology on the campus of Saint Louis University, has named Julie M. Jones and Greg Rohde recipients of the 2004 Catherine of Siena Excellence in Ministry Award.
Before they married – even before they met – Rohde and Jones discovered in themselves the desire to serve and lead. That desire played out in their lives in careers connected to the Catholic Church. Rohde is associate director of pastoral services for the Diocese of Belleville, Ill. Jones is a former manager with Catholic Health Association, a national group based in St. Louis, and is pursuing a leadership position in a faith-based, long-term care facility.
Jones and Rohde will receive the award on Tuesday, Oct. 19. The event begins with vespers, or evening prayer, at 6:30 p.m. at St. Francis Xavier “College” Church, Grand and Lindell boulevards. The awards presentation and reception follow in the church ballroom at 7:30 p.m.
The Catherine of Siena Excellence in Ministry Award calls attention to the increasingly widespread role of the non-ordained in the Catholic Church and highlights what the Church can accomplish when it calls upon the gifts of its priests as well as its laywomen and men. Jones and Rohde, the second and third recipients of the Siena Award, will share the evening with the 10th recipient of the Great Preacher Award, which recognizes the profound impact of great preaching. Fr. Joe Kempf, pastor of Assumption Church in O’Fallon, Mo., is the 2004 honoree.
Jones and Rohde married in 1994 and are members of St. Margaret of Scotland parish in the Shaw neighborhood. Both recall moments in which they knew their life courses would take shape in service and leadership.
For Jones, the moment presented itself when she was 17. She was with other teens at a Christian Leadership Institute in Cincinnati. The teens huddled. Leaders gathered around them and placed their hands on them. “Do not say that you are too young,” they prayed. “You are leaders. Go forth from here and lead.”
And Jones did. She spent two years as a high school campus minister in Milwaukee, then moved to St. Louis and joined a public policy agency known then as Confluence St. Louis, now FOCUS St. Louis. She enrolled at Aquinas Institute and worked as a health care chaplain as part of her graduate studies. After graduation, she began at Catholic Health Association. Much of her work with CHA dealt with mission integration – balancing the bottom line with the values that shape Catholic health care. She also has served on the Archbishop’s Commission on Community Health, the Human Rights Commission of the Archdiocese and the Gateway Catholic Ethics Network, all in St. Louis.
For Rohde, the moments were many. He was in second-grade when his pastor asked him to be an acolyte – three years sooner than the rest of his class. His eighth-grade classmates and a group of high school students elected him president of his parish youth group at his first meeting.
On a retreat as a sophomore, he wrote: “God, I want to serve you. Help me develop my gifts to the fullest so I can offer them to your people and lay down my life for the them.”
Rohde spent nine years in the seminary and 18 since as a lay minister. In the Archdiocese of St. Louis, he was a coordinator of youth programs for 13 years and director of young adult ministry for three more years. He began as associate director of pastoral services in Belleville in 2003. The job includes working with women and men who run parishes in the absence of resident priests, running a job bank for lay ministers, establishing professional guidelines for lay ministers and providing educational resources for lay ministers. Rohde has served on the executive board of the National Association for Lay Ministry and as vice president of the National Catholic Young Adult Ministry Association.
Both Rohde and Jones have graduate degrees in theology, and both say their work is reflective of the state of the Catholic Church today.
“When I was growing up,” Rohde said. “I had one model of ministry. My role models were ordained men. Now, young people considering working for the Church have neighbors, parents, and parishioners who are role models to them.”
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