I was there to speak at a meeting called the NCEC, equivalent to our National Catholic Educational Association, except that it only meets once every eight years. They had more workshops on the topic of collaboration than on any other topic. However, when I met with the people doing the workshops, we all had a different understanding and meaning of what we meant by collaboration. I suggest that the first thing you do if you want to become collaborative is to sit down with the group with whom you're working and find out what you mean by collaboration, how you understand it. A lot of frustration comes as a result of using the word to cover everything.
Every group considers themselves collaborative.
For me collaboration is completely based on the concept of gift. Collaboration is a way of describing how we do ministry for the sake of mission. Collaborative ministry, to me, is a bringing together of gifts. For me, when I think of collaborative ministry, it is a very, very simple concept. It is a way of doing ministry in which the goal and the way we evaluate it is always based on the concept of mission, and the essence of it is gift.