Formation & Training

There's something I've noticed over the years of walking alongside fellow Vincentians. The ones who last the longest, who seem most at peace, who genuinely transform the lives of the people they visit — they never saw themselves as helpers looking down. They saw themselves as friends sitting alongside. That's the heart of what we call servant leadership, and I want to share with you why I believe it's not just a style of leadership but the very soul of who we are as a Society.

We exist inside a bigger story

Before we even talk about how we lead, we need to remember why we're here at all. The Church has always understood that worship and service are inseparable. You can't genuinely encounter Christ at the altar on Sunday and then ignore Him in the face of a struggling family on Monday. Our Society was born from exactly that conviction — that charity must become personal, that love must become concrete.

Our purpose as Vincentians has always been beautifully simple and endlessly demanding. No work of charity is foreign to us. That's not a slogan. It's a way of seeing the world. When we walk into someone's home, we're not just a committee doing an assessment. We are the Church making its love real in that room, in that moment, for that person. The moment we forget that, we become just another welfare organisation. The moment we remember it, everything we do is charged with meaning.

Leadership that washes feet

Now, here's where I want to be honest with you, especially those of you who are Presidents, Secretaries, Treasurers, or who are being asked to step up into those roles. I've seen people take on positions in the Society with the best of intentions and quietly start thinking of themselves as administrators rather than servants. It happens gradually, almost without noticing. The reports start to feel more important than the visits. The meetings start to feel more real than the friendships.

Jesus was very clear about this, and it's worth sitting with His words for a moment. The greatest among you must be your servant. Not should try to be, not would ideally be — must be. This isn't optional Vincentian spirituality. This is the foundation. When Blessed Frédéric Ozanam gathered those first young men in Paris, they didn't form a committee to study poverty. They went and visited a family. Leadership in our Society has always meant going first, not managing from a distance.

What that looks like practically is this: if you are a conference President and you haven't done a home visit recently, that's worth reflecting on. Your members watch what you do far more than they listen to what you say. When they see you carry a bag of groceries up four flights of stairs without complaint, when they see you sit patiently and listen to an elderly man tell the same story for the third time, when they see you protect the dignity of the people you're visiting in the way you speak about them at meetings — that's formation. That's leadership. No training manual in the world can replicate it.

The quiet power of listening

One of the things that makes our Society distinctive is how we communicate — or more precisely, how we listen. In a world that is increasingly noisy and opinionated, there is something countercultural and powerful about a group of people who turn up at someone's door with no agenda except to understand.

I always tell newer members: resist the urge to fix things too quickly. When you sit in someone's home, your first job isn't to calculate what kind of assistance they need. Your first job is to be present. To let them feel that they matter. Often the most important thing we give someone isn't the voucher or the groceries — it's the experience of being truly listened to by another human being who genuinely cares. That's something no government programme or online donation platform can replicate.

This also means how we speak about the people we serve in our meetings matters enormously. Every case discussed is a real human being with dignity, fears and hopes. The way we talk about them among ourselves shapes the way we see them, and the way we see them shapes the way we serve them. Discretion and respect aren't bureaucratic rules. They are expressions of love.

Deciding together, close to the ground

One of the wisest things built into our structure is the principle of subsidiarity — the idea that decisions should be made at the level closest to the need. Your conference doesn't need to wait for approval from a council to help a family in crisis. You know the situation. You know the people. You are there. That's not just efficient; it's theologically meaningful. It's a recognition that the Holy Spirit is present in your little gathering on a weekday evening, not just in grand conventions.

What I've found in good conferences is that they don't just vote on cases. They discern together. There's a difference. Voting is transactional. Discernment is prayerful. When a good conference discusses a difficult case, they're asking what genuine help looks like for this particular person in this particular situation. They're asking how to assist without creating dependency. They're asking what would truly protect the dignity of a human being made in the image of God. That kind of deliberation takes time and it takes humility, but it produces something that a quick vote never can — wisdom.

Growing without losing your soul

Our Society in Malaysia has come a long way. We are fully locally led now, and that is something to be genuinely proud of. We've grown from one conference in 1937 to over sixty today. We've moved from general assistance to specialised projects — homes, educational support, prison ministry, disaster relief. These are real fruits of decades of faithful service.

But growth brings its own temptations, and I think the most dangerous one is the temptation to become professional in a way that squeezes out the personal. The moment our conferences start to feel like service delivery organisations rather than spiritual families, something essential has been lost. Projects are important, but they must always flow from and return to the personal encounter. The home visit is not a preliminary step before the real work. The home visit is the real work.

This is why formation matters so much, and why welcoming and mentoring new members deserves as much attention as any project we run. The Vincentian spirit isn't written in a manual. It's caught. It's transmitted through relationship, through example, through a senior member sitting with a newer one and showing them by how they behave in that home visit what it means to serve with love and respect. That transmission is one of the most important things we do, and it requires intentionality.

Money held in open hands

Let me say something about how we handle resources, because I think it reveals a great deal about our character. Our practice of ensuring that donations go entirely to those in need, with administrative costs covered separately, isn't just good governance. It's a spiritual posture. It says: this money was given in trust, and we hold it with open hands on behalf of the people it was meant to reach.

Every treasurer who presents a clear, honest account at a meeting is doing something more than bookkeeping. They are bearing witness to integrity. They are saying to the conference and to the donors and to God: we are trustworthy with small things. That matters. And when we establish separate structures for situations where grant funding becomes necessary, we do it precisely to preserve the independence and agility that allows us to remain who we are. Our freedom from red tape isn't laziness. It's a deliberate choice to stay close to the ground, responsive and human.

The culture we are called to protect

What makes a Vincentian conference feel like home? I've visited many conferences over the years and the ones that thrive have something in common that's hard to quantify but unmistakable when you experience it. There's warmth. There's laughter alongside the seriousness. Members know each other's families. The people they serve know their names. There's prayer that feels real rather than routine. And there's a complete absence of the sense that anyone is doing anyone a favour — because genuine friendship doesn't work that way.

We serve anyone in need regardless of faith, ethnicity or background. In the context of our beautiful and complex Malaysian society, that quiet, consistent witness is more powerful than we perhaps realise. When a Muslim family and a Hindu family and a Christian family have all been treated with equal dignity and equal warmth by the same group of Vincentians, something is being demonstrated that no interfaith dialogue forum can quite capture. We are showing, not telling, what it looks like when love has no conditions.

A word for the road

Brothers and sisters, we are not just a charity. We are a spiritual family, and families are held together by love and commitment and the willingness to keep showing up even when it's inconvenient. Our structures and meetings and reports exist for one reason only — to help us love Christ in the poor more effectively. The moment those structures serve any other purpose, we should have the courage to question them.

So let's go forward with confidence and with humility in equal measure. Let's pray with more depth so that our service stays joyful. Let's throw open our doors to younger members and accompany them generously. Let's use every helpful tool available to us while keeping the human encounter at the absolute centre of everything we do. And let's never, ever become too important or too busy to climb those stairs and sit across from someone who needs a friend.

The poor are not waiting for a programme. They are waiting for us — in all our imperfect, faithful, servant-hearted humanity. That is our vocation. That is, by God's extraordinary grace, who we get to be.

Offered in the Vincentian spirit, for discussion and reflection among our conferences.

Hugh B. Dason Formation and Training Committee - 2025 /2026

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