For decades, Vlado Kevric thrived in the corporate world, managing teams of over 100 people across insurance branches and call centres. Success was measured in targets met, KPIs exceeded, and bottom lines improved. But something was missing.
“It was always a job or target, something that was there to achieve,” Vlado reflects on his corporate leadership days. “Very functional.”
That all changed when Vlado participated in the Called and Gifted charism discernment program.
The process is designed to help Catholics identify and understand their unique spiritual gifts, often referred to as charisms. These gifts, bestowed by the Holy Spirit, are gifts given to serve others, build up the Church, and further God’s mission.
The process, is organised through the Parish Renewal Team (PRT) within the Sydney Centre for Evangelisation (SCE), using the Catherine of Siena Institute model. Tania Rimac, a team leader of the Parish Renewal Team shared “Discerning our charisms allows us to recognise how God has uniquely gifted and equipped each of us to serve Him and His Church.”
Through this spiritual discernment process, Vlado discovered his charism of leadership – but with a profound difference from his corporate experience. “It widened the scope of what my understanding of leadership was, but it also brought into my life a lot of excitement around the things that I could do,” he explains.
Where corporate leadership focused on directing and telling people what to do, Vlado discovered that faith-based leadership was about “engaging people with a vision for what is possible and sharing with people things that people can do and get involved in.”
The transformation was immediate and profound.
Since completing ‘Called and Gifted’, Vlado has revolutionised ministry at his local parish through the Life Groups program. He was involved in establishing the “Companions Program” to create a pipeline from Alpha courses through to ongoing small group ministry.
“The concept basically is people might traditionally go through Alpha, then after that finishes, we have a connect group where people continue for another four or five weeks,” Vlado explains.
The contrast between corporate and parish leadership couldn’t be starker for Vlado.
“This isn’t about personal advancement or financial reward – it’s about souls.”
One unexpected benefit of ‘Called and Gifted’ was learning to recognise spiritual gifts in others. “It helped me view people through a different lens. I could look at people and see the gifts that they actually had, but perhaps I wasn’t really aware of initially,” Vlado notes.
For Catholics considering ‘Called and Gifted’, Vlado’s message is simple: “Give it a go. You’ve got nothing to lose, everything to gain. It’s a wonderful journey.”
Today, as a husband, father of three grown children, grandfather of two, and caregiver to his elderly mother, Vlado has found a way to integrate his leadership gifts into every aspect of life – not in corporate KPIs, but in building communities and changing lives.
“I don’t see any limits or boundaries in terms of what we can do and how many people we can take with us,” he says with the confidence of a man who has found his true calling.
To learn more about ‘Called and Gifted’ and discover your own charisms please follow the link.