Jim Rigg: Listening to the Holy Spirit

As the Superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago, Jim Rigg has had plenty of experience listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit. Other people might look for the Holy Spirit in a miraculous turning point, but Jim knows better. Jim knows that when you calm the heart amid the chaos of normal life, you just might find the Holy Spirit is talking to you all the time.

As a part of ACE 6 in Memphis, Jim began to realize how subtle the voice of the Holy Spirit can be. Teaching social studies, writing, religion, and computer classes to seventh through twelfth graders, Jim says, “My students and my larger school community called on me to be an agent of change.” As he talked with individual students, worked with his classes, and communicated with parents and the larger school community, Jim could feel the Holy Spirit pointing out the potential for great growth within the people he encountered every day. Jim says that he feels drawn to the students whom he could see had the capacity to do more and to the students with special needs, whose potential lay untapped when their unique needs weren’t clearly understood. With every lesson and every teaching moment, the Holy Spirit taught Jim to see possibilities in his students and in his school community.

Jim jokes that he hasn’t really had a career path since he was 22, but looking back at his career journey, it is clear how the Holy Spirit has spoken through the people in his life. After graduating from ACE Teaching Fellows, the voices of his school and his now wife encouraged him to stay in Memphis as the Dean of Bishop Byrne Middle and High School. His professional mentor, Dr. Mary McDonald, then-superintendent of Memphis, called him between classes and talked him into becoming a principal at St. Joseph Catholic School, a newly reopening inner city elementary school that was a part of the Jubilee Catholic Schools network. Like other schools in the network, St. Joseph had been closed, but would be renewed to serve the children of Memphis’ urban neighborhoods that were in the greatest need. Working with significant need-based scholarships, Jubilee schools live out the Catholic faith by serving a predominantly low-income student population.

The voices of Jim’s family and home drew him next back to Colorado, where the Holy Spirit once again guided Jim to the challenge he loves best–a turnaround opportunity. Serving as principal at Divine Redeemer Catholic School in Colorado Springs and eventually the Diocesan Director of Curriculum, Jim looked at a school on the brink of closure and listened to the potential that the Holy Spirit was whispering about in his ear. In five years, working alongside a new pastor, Divine Redeemer went from being on the brink of financial collapse to the largest Catholic elementary school in the area. Still, the Holy Spirit wasn’t done talking to Jim–his colleagues nudged him toward a superintendent position in Cincinnati, where he served for five years. After the superintendent position in Chicago opened, Jim’s ACE and Notre Dame friends’ voices spurred him on and supported his movement to the Archdiocese of Chicago, which is the largest Catholic school system in the United States.

With each stop on his journey, Jim has found that when he needs to truly understand a school and its community, he quiets the worries about student support, academics, and finances. In the space that remains, Jim listens to the voices of the students, teachers, staff, parents, administration, and community. With room for those voices to grow, Jim is able to sense the latent possibilities that lie underneath the anxieties. Jim says that ACE provided him with two ways to understand how to support and grow Catholic schools: “First, ACE fostered a genuine sense of mission and commitment to that mission with its interaction of academic, social, and faith formation. Second, ACE showed me the value of cultivating the talent of my people so that they can best follow the Holy Spirit’s call to serve. In every strategic plan that I have created, I have looked to these two principles to guide me so that I too can inspire a sense of unity, commitment, and energy to move forward.”

Jim’s role as superintendent now gives him a new way to develop those ideas from ACE. Jim says, “I was inspired and formed by ACE, I was led by the Holy Spirit, and it is now my mission to form and inspire others.”

Jim remembers one of his former students who chose to pursue teaching because she felt inspired by him to commit to the mission of faith-filled education, and he hopes that more students will find joy in a teaching vocation. He sees the faces of the children in the schools when he visits and knows that each of them deserves the chance to be lovingly guided through their academic and faith journey. With four children of his own in Catholic schools, Jim thinks about Catholic school parents and works to empower them as the primary religious educators for their children. He strives to intentionally and systemically look at the quality of teaching to make sure every teacher and leader finds ways to light their own vocation and desire for improvement and success.

Each day, Jim greets the new morning with energy and hope. He quiets his heart and readies himself to hear the message of the Holy Spirit anew: today and every day, Catholic students and teachers are lifting their voices, working together to form the moral compass of a new generation of leaders who will transform our world.