In case you missed it! Last spring, we interviewed Dr. Lynn Waidelich, Principal and Chief Academic Officer at one of our ministry sites, Cristo Rey Richmond High School. Dr. Waidelich has shown hospitality and leadership to Ministry Volunteers placed at Cristo Rey Richmond High School since 2020. She has served as a Site Supervisor and hired three BSVM alumni as teachers after their commitment ended with BSVM, which she reflects on in this conversation as well.

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Friend of BSVM: Dr. Lynn Waidelich
Conversation with Lynn Waidelich, Principal and Chief Academic Officer
Cristo Rey Richmond High School

How were you first introduced to BSVM?
I had been in conversations with Cristo Rey leadership about this Bon Secours Volunteer Ministry we were connecting with, but I didn’t know any of the faces involved in the program. It was the late summer in 2020 at the start of our second year as a school and we were hosting a virtual family town hall. We were looking for parents to log on and we had this eager anticipation of who would arrive, counting how many people came on the Zoom because at that point, what we had lost was connection, and we wanted to stay connected to as many parents as possible.

We were eager to see our families and regain a little of our connection to what we had very tentatively had before the lock-down. At this Back to School town hall, there were three people that were online, their cameras were on, and I remember thinking – wow – look at this family that’s so committed to the Cristo Rey mission! And then I found out that it was the Bon Secours Ministry Volunteers – I just didn’t know you yet! That was one of my earliest memories, seeing the Volunteers and their enthusiasm for the school in a way that many of our parents were not quite as enthusiastic about.

What gifts have you/your staff observed from the Ministry Volunteers over the years?
I think about the three volunteers who are still very much part of our work and our mission. To me, there are so many gifts that Ministry Volunteers bring: of enthusiasm and joy, of competency and the ability to problem-solve. They’re each really good in the classroom in their different disciplines and subjects, so they bring so many things.

I was thinking about the through-line between these three young people. To me, it’s the gift of the Holy Spirit. Lots of people join our work and they come in with high hopes, big dreams, and huge aspirations, and then the work is hard and the kids are hard and the year is long, and the reality of the work sets in. There is something different about Caroline, Mario, and Mikayla – that they are as committed now as maybe they ever have been. Through the thick and thin and the good and the bad and the easy and the hard. And I don’t know any other way to say it– that has to be Divine. It’s not human strength because we all run out of that commitment at some point. With the three of them, they have retained a joy and a belief and hope when most of their peer-group and their colleagues at some point run out. So besides all of the smarts and all of the competencies and all of the preparation and planning – they have all of those things – they also have something inside of them that remains loyal and faithful, sometimes beyond reason.

Left to our own devices, we all have a finite amount of gifts to give or commitment to give. But each of them has an ability to go back to the well in a way that very few of their contemporaries do to fill themselves back up – with God, with purpose, with meaning – it’s probably both the work of the Holy Spirit and the skills and the strategies that they’ve developed in going back to the Holy Spirit to be re-filled with that.

How has Bon Secours Volunteer Ministry helped to expand your mission at Cristo Rey Richmond?
We’re sponsored by the Sisters of Bon Secours, so we’re also working towards the charism of the sisters. But compassion, healing, and liberation are pretty huge and high level – liberation is a really hard thing to feel like you accomplish on any day or lifetime or millennia. So, I think in some ways, the volunteers have been very physical representations of the work of the Sisters of Bon Secours and what our bigger work is. It can be easy to get lost in compassion and liberation – you can show it in some moments, but each of the volunteers have been able to physically represent the charism and perhaps what the sisters did in their time. As the sisters were healing and as they were working with people, you watch the volunteers do that same sort of work – on the ground, in the field, mundane actual work – and how that, along with a whole lot of other people’s work combined, hopefully works towards these huge lofty ideals of the charism. I think the volunteers are tangible examples of what the sisters have been, and they help us see what that looks like in our classrooms, and our hallways, and Black History Month, and all of the unique things that each of them take on.

Now that these alumni have been with us for three years, it’s not even what they have been able to do in one year, but now we’re talking about year upon year. From an academic point of view, there is a ton of research that says: you don’t need an excellent teacher for one year, you have to have it for at least two to see any sort of significant change for a kid. We can see the benefit of these alumni year to year in what they have been able to do.

Yesterday, because of Caroline’s hard work with the SGA [Student Government Association], and her commitment to Black History Month, and because Caroline and Mario are part of Holy Rosary Catholic Church*, we took the whole school to Holy Rosary for our Black History Mass. Students felt connected to that worship experience in a way that many of them have not ever felt in all of the masses that they’ve gone to. Yesterday in that church, kids felt connected to Saint Josephine, they felt connected to that parish, and that’s a tangible example of the mission. A student walked away and said to Caroline and Mario, ‘thank you so much for hosting us at your church.’ While lots of people planned it, the students saw Caroline and Mario as hosts because it was their home parish, and that felt like they were welcoming them to a space that the students felt invited into. And what a gift that is for kiddos.

[*Holy Rosary Catholic Church is the oldest active African American Catholic Church in Richmond and is the parish congregation for BSVM volunteers, less than a mile from their house. BSVM has been grateful for this faith community and for the hospitality and love shown to each BSVM community that moves in.]

What is your hope for young adults who are considering a year with BSVM?
I think I have a few levels of hope. The first is, now that I’ve been a professional for multiple decades, there is such a blessing of taking a breath or taking a pause between things. Between college and career. In deciding what you want, where your next steps are, that pause is so powerful. My first hope for the young person is to build a little bit of space between things and enjoy having just a little bit of space between. It feels like such a remarkable gift to be able to pause post-college before what comes next.

The second part of that is about building the habits of faith. To be able to – in community – transition between being ‘a college kid’ and ‘an adult’ and to be able to practice and play with how to do things that help us be good people over a long period of time, not just an in and out way, but how do we do this over a lifetime? I think BSVM helps young people think about not just how to be men and women of faith today but also helps frame how someone builds something that’s going to help them be a person of faith in a decade or two decades or three decades.

The third layer: there is such desire for meaning in our world. I think BSVM allows a young person to find meaning for themselves – in healthcare or education or whatever the actual working environment is – which means they’re able to find their own meaning separate from the meaning of their families or the meaning that other people have given them; they get to build how they can contribute and how they can find meaning for themselves.

There is significance to ‘in community’. I think one of the things that has impressed me the most about this type of year is to be able to transition alongside other people. I think there is such a deep loneliness when you leave college and you go into the workforce, and many people feel very isolated. A person may be working and going to the grocery store and doing all these new, strange adult things – but doing it in a city that they may not know people or in a context that they don’t have familiarity with. One of the greatest gifts I think of BSVM is that it is built in community, and you’re doing all that with other people. When I think about where Caroline, Mario, and Mikayla are currently living, there is nothing that brings me more comfort than the fact that they are still in community together. That is such joy to me, and I have watched how much that is a protective factor for young people, to have those that care about them and about God all around them, and what a unique gift that is of the program.

Last words:
I was the college kid who was the do-gooder and wanted to go save the world. I was the person that would have signed up for Bon Secours. It blows my mind that it’s a thing – that you can do that in a way that is supported. I just jumped off a cliff and I taught in south Atlanta, and I got an apartment by myself, and I did some of the same things, but in a way that was such a shock to my system because I was alone. To do that with people and a leader who can guide you– that’s just the greatest gift ever, particularly for those who are inclined to go into the world and to give back.