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May 23, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 11Oakland,
CA
July 1 will be a homecoming and also a new beginning
for Keith Borchers, who is scheduled that day to take over as director
of a recently formed diocesan department serving the pastoral ministries
of parishes.
When Borchers leaves his job as director of parish evangelization in the
Archdiocese of Chicago, he and his wife Gina will be heading home to the
Bay Area. Even their six children, who will leave schools and friends
behind, are looking forward to the change, he said.
The lure of Northern California was a major reason he took the job, Borchers
said, but he was also impressed with what he has heard about Bishop Allen
Vigneron and with the mission of his new job here. He will be directing
the Department of Parish Catechetical Outreach, which was created at the
beginning of this year.
The department encompasses several ministries, all with a focus on education
and formation, and sends staff out as resource personnel for parishes.
“I love that,” Borchers said, because it makes diocesan staff
accountable for serving the needs of parishes.
“Sometimes we get too comfortable sitting at our desks,” he
said. “It’s very important to be out.”
Borchers has been involved in similar efforts in Chicago and the Diocese
of Sioux Falls, S. D., where he served as Director of Catechesis from
1996 to 2002. He has been in his present post since September 2002.
In Oakland, Borchers will oversee a staff of 14 persons with specialties
in family life, youth, young adult and respect life ministries, liturgy,
social justice, catechetics, small Christian communities, and ministries
to various ethnic communities. The staff members were scheduled to become
acquainted with their new boss during a meeting on May 23.
In Chicago, Borchers has worked with 374 parishes serving a Catholic population
of 2.4 million, and he said he enjoys working out in parishes as well
as supervising within a department. “I enjoy the challenges of an
entrepreneurial situation,” he said, of “figuring out the
unknowns and seeing what God’s got in store next.”
He has worked in management since he was 18 and overseeing a staff of
some 20 persons in a Lake County grocery store. “I’ve always
enjoyed that,” he said.
His educational background includes a degree in business from Santa Rosa
Junior College, a BA in psychology from Sonoma State University, and an
MA in theology and Christian ministry from the Franciscan University of
Steubenville in Ohio. He also earned a certificate in catechetics from
Steubenville.
Borchers finds his new post “really exciting” because it involves
“a staff of people who have been doing this for a while and have
a lot of experience.” Most of the department’s staff have
worked for many years in their areas of expertise.
Keith Borchers
