Ascension Mission

To equip a group of Executive Leaders with the leadership competencies, self-awareness, essential theological understanding, spiritual maturing and practices needed to steward Ascension as a ministry of the Church in our rapidly changing healthcare landscape and prepare them to act as catalysts of a deeper commitment to Ascension’s Mission and Ministry identity.

Eight Retreats
Our six in-person sessions and two live-virtual sessions provide opportunity for face-to-face meetings with co-learners, faculty and facilitators. The retreats focus on exploring spirituality and the inner life, building community and applying theological learning to critical healthcare leadership questions.

Weekly Learning Dialogue
After reflecting on readings, videos, podcasts, and other media that provide key theological input, participants engage in dialogue that deepens understanding and explores implications of what is being learned. Conversations are facilitated by experienced subject matter expert course instructors in an asynchronous online format using the Thinkific learning management system.

Formation Integration
The EML program concludes with a practicum during which participants discern a particular aspect of their existing work and demonstrate program outcomes through a project that solves for a barrier experienced by marginalized persons.

• Exploration of relevant principles from the Catholic theological tradition, especially human dignity and participation
• An environment that fosters personal reflection, integration, a sense of community and personal growth
• Practical connections between mission, Catholic Identity, and ministry leadership competencies (as described in Ascension leadership competencies) especially related to team building
• Opportunities to practice skills and integrate concepts into one life and leadership through reflection on action and asynchronous conversation

Mystery of God Who Calls
Explores our ancestors’ experiences of God and the beliefs about God that led our founders to recognize and respond to the call to build Catholic healthcare. Participants will consider their own call to leadership of this ministry.

Jesus: Mission and Ministry
Explores the scriptural witness of Jesus’ life and ministry with a particular focus on the implications for a Catholic view of the human person. Participants will consider what it means for Ascension to be “rooted in the loving ministry of Jesus as healer.”

Church: Mission and Ministry
Offers a broad view of the Church and the healthcare ministry’s place within it. Participants examine the ways that Ascension expresses the Vatican II definition of the Church as communion and mission. An exploration of ministry, collaboration and sponsorship provides the context for explicit reflection on how Ascension, as a face of the Church, is a ministry of the Church in the world.

Catholic Moral Vision: Personal and Social
Introduces a broad context for the Church’s moral teaching, especially Catholic Social Teaching. Participants explore specific implications for leading Ascension and for the transformation of healthcare.

Catholic Healthcare Ethics: Clinical and Organizational
Teaches key moral and ethical principles relevant to healthcare. Participants will learn how to apply Ethical and Religious Directives (ERDs) to organizational and clinical decision-making, and how and when to use the Organizational Ethics Discernment Process.

Executive Ministry Leadership (EML) Formation prepares individual leaders in community to:

• Be personally committed to practices and habits of spiritual reflection that foster deeper relationship with self, God, others, community and the world as part of their ongoing formation
• Be professionally committed to the healing ministry and mission of Jesus with special attention to those who are poor and vulnerable.
• Integrate and practice Servant Leadership while being in and building community
• Develop a working vocabulary of the foundational principles from the Catholic theological, moral and spiritual tradition in order to articulate our ministry identity and Mission.
• Interpret and lead our strategic, operational, financial, clinical and organizational processes as expressions of Ascension’s identity as a ministry of the Church.