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Chapter 3

Addressing the Real Crisis

The real crisis in the Church is not the priest shortage, dipping donations, or even the low percentage of Catholics who attend Sunday Mass. These are just symptoms of a deeper cultural problem. The crisis in the Church is our pervasive failure over multiple generations to form disciples.

What our parishes need is not just a few new ways of doing things; they need a complete overhaul of culture. That word, “culture,” is the sum total of the unspoken values, attitudes, biases, and behavioral norms of a group. It is the lens through which that group interprets reality, yet it remains largely unspoken. The culture of a parish is often felt long before it is understood or articulated. Whether we are aware of it or not, any visitor or newcomer to our community begins to feel the culture of the place before we have a chance to say a single thing about who we are and who we want to be.

Consider a positive example. Christ the King parish in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has long been known (to those who know of it) as one of the most vibrant parishes in the country. A 2009 article from Legatus Magazine details the religious vocations that grew out of the parish over a period of ten years: twenty priests, twenty-four seminarians, almost two dozen women in vows in religious orders, and ten women in formation in various orders.¹⁶

When I was in high school, my dad took a trip to Ann Arbor and attended Christ the King for Sunday Mass. I will never forget him coming home and describing the experience. He was blown away. He related how the depth of prayer, the devotion, the working of the Holy Spirit were tangible. Later, when my wife and I lived in Ann Arbor, I had a chance to attend Christ the King myself a few times. It did not disappoint! You can sense the culture of Christ the King as soon as you walk in. There is just something different there than in any other parish I have ever been to.

Often, when we cannot gain traction in trying to renew our parish, it is because we are bumping up against a cultural obstacle that we may not have known was there. Implicitly, operating the way we have for generations has defined the culture of our parishes in ways that can be unhealthy. We have formed Catholics in what it means to be the Church, and often this formation has missed the mark.

Many of our parishes have operated for a long time mainly as places for baptized Catholics to gather together (most) Sundays for Mass and to receive the sacraments. Whether we like it or not, this maintenance mindset in a parish creates a definite culture.

How can you begin to determine the current culture of your parish? Simply ask the following questions — ask them of yourself and of your parishioners:

• What does it mean to be a Catholic?

• What does it mean to be a member of this parish?

• Why does our parish exist?

Culture reflects our answers to these big questions, and everyone has an answer, whether they think they do or not. How do your parishioners answer these questions? That is your parish culture.

For years, the culture of our parishes has largely been fo cused inward, driven by the maintenance-mode model. Following the Second Vatican Council, with its radical call to go outward and re-Christify the world, too many parishes simply focused inward, enacting changes to the liturgy and governance, looking to parish membership and offertory as benchmarks of success. This emphasis is responsible for some of the decline we are seeing today. The maintenance model seemed to be all that was required of parishes when the secular culture largely supported religious practice. Yet this apparent vitality lulled us into a false sense of security. We mistook high levels of activity in our parishes for overall healthy cultures and never considered looking deeper to see if our parishes were really fulfilling their mission: to form disciples.

In our present cultural reality, the only possible “maintenance mode” for parishes is mission. The secular culture in our world no longer supports religious practice. It is, in many ways, openly hostile to Christianity in general, but especially to Catholicism. What many parishes and dioceses are awakening to is the fact that, in our current secularizing moment, the only way forward is to sell out for mission. For parishes, this will require a complete cultural overhaul — an overhaul that is focused on turning our parishes into what they are supposed to be: missional hubs of the New Evangelization. How do we do that?

Here is the punchline, where it all comes together: In order to renew the Church, we have to renew the parish. In order to renew the parish, we have to form disciples who can make disciples. It is that simple. It is never easy, but it is also not complicated. This is our vision with L’Alto Catholic Institute. Parishes are renewed and transformed when the people who comprise them experience deep and lasting conversion through becoming missionary disciples.

You might think of changing parish culture like making good barbecue. As I understand it, barbecue developed because it was an easy way to make cheap meats taste delicious. Using low heat and slow cook times, you can tenderize even very tough meats. The key is time. You’ve got to let it cook for hours. Cultural change is like that, because it involves the transformation of attitudes and hearts. It is not the work of a moment.

This kind of transformation is difficult, and, because of that, too often left untried. Aiming at the total overhaul of the parish culture has to be the end goal, or else many parish leaders, who deeply desire the renewal of their parishes, will never begin because of the difficulties they encounter. To effect such a change will take not a week, or even a year or two, but will be the work of the next ten years. This is the inherent difficulty in parish renewal. We are facing a problem that should have been fixed twenty years ago. There is an urgency to the task in front of us. Yet, the antidote will also take time. There is no way around this problem, and any attempts at “shortcuts” will only lead to false starts.

We need to begin with this big-picture vision of a complete cultural overhaul, from focusing inward on maintenance to moving outward toward mission and forming disciples. Only a goal that big will inspire the work that will be required.

It might only be slightly hyperbolic to say there is really no such thing as “parish renewal” per se. There is only the transformation of people who then live out that transformation in community and mission. Any true renewal of a parish culture must make as its first goal the renewal of parishioners themselves as intentional disciples.

Where are the Disciples?

As I have talked to leaders in the pro-life movement over the years, I have heard a shift in emphasis in much of their language. While there is still plenty of focus on legislative action, I am hearing many leaders in the pro-life movement reflect on the need to change hearts in addition to laws. Without the renewal of hearts, without people understanding the value of every human life including unborn life, any changes that are made to legislation will just be overturned by the next generation. The battle may be won with strategies, but the war is won with conversions.

This brings us to the fundamental problem that is plaguing our parishes right now: Too few Catholics are intentional disciples of Jesus Christ. It’s not the music, the preaching, the liturgy, the greeters, the Religious Education program, or the parish picnic. None of those things is the core issue, and so none of these things can be the core solution. The problem is that for too long, parishes have not explicitly invited people to hand over their entire life to Jesus Christ, helped them grow into the fullness of Christian maturity, and then sent them on mission to go do the same for and with others. Before we can turn our attention outside our parish walls to reevangelize the secular world, we have to first deal with this crisis of a lack of intentional discipleship in our pews.

If we fix this problem, we can fix our parish cultures.

Pope Saint John Paul II put it this way: “It is more necessary than ever for all the faithful to move from a faith of habit, sustained perhaps by social context alone, to a faith which is conscious and personally lived.”¹⁷

If a culture is the sum of the attitudes of actual people, it is only when a significant percentage of a parish is intentional, missionary disciples that it will really begin to approach cultural renewal. If that is not our sole goal in everything we do, we will just be shuffling around our strategies and getting nowhere.

A parish that wants to renew itself must have a singular focus on forming disciples. It must be abundantly clear to staff, laity, clergy, everyone, that the entire life of the parish, it’s raison d’être, is to form disciples of Jesus Christ, and there must also be an equally clear understanding of how that happens in the parish. It is only then that the renewal we seek can move from a surface-level reality to become the actual living culture of the parish.

This is actually great news, because it gives us a concrete place to begin our renewal efforts. Lasting change, real change, comes from this more personal focus on helping individuals walk into a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ. In other words, if you want large scale, macro culture change in your parish, you have to start by getting micro.

What was so markedly different about the culture of Christ the King parish that made it as formative and impactful as it is? It is not just that they did Catholic things or that they had a plan for evangelization or that there was good music. The long-time pastor, Father Ed Fride, was very clear on what happened. He said, “The spirituality of the parish, in which a personal relationship with Jesus is continually stressed, is key … a living, active relationship with Jesus Christ is encouraged.”¹⁸

When a culture is forged by dynamic, joyful, creative disciples living their entire lives for the Lord, there is a compounding factor. When a parish has hundreds, even thousands, of on-fire missionary disciples totally sold out on living a radical call to holiness and bearing fruit with their lives, amazing things can happen. If your parish was like that, how would it change the way it looked to outsiders, felt to insiders, and operated for leaders? Can you even imagine your parish operating like that? Is it difficult to even conceive of?

Does the thought even make you a little nervous?

Every parish is called to be this kind of community. Look at the incredibly fruitful culture of the early Church as described in the Acts of the Apostles. The first Christians were a joyful community of disciples bringing thousands to the Lord. The Church today still has the same vocation. This is the lofty calling every parish shares.

Becoming a missional parish, focused on seeking and saving the lost, is the “destination” for every parish in our current cultural climate. Focusing on forming disciples is the path to get there.

Beyond Buzzwords