Is Your Parish Keeping Its Money from the Great Commission?

Does it take money to become an apostolic parish? Last week, in Part 1, I answered NO. This week, in Part 2 of 3, I begin with a great big HOWEVER…. Next week (Part 3), I share a bit about the bigger problem.

Last week I made the argument that becoming an evangelizing parish does not need to be a budget breaker. Jesus didn’t run a fundraiser before the sharing the gospel. There are free and inexpensive ways to move toward deliberate evangelization and mission. This is a mindset and practice change more than a necessary budget change. And if your parish is deliberately living simply, there can be an positive and profound evangelical witness to living the gospel in voluntary poverty (a la Francis of Assisi).

So you don’t need money to become an evangelizing parish. Good news!

HOWEVER…if you have the money, and you aren’t using it to promote missionary discipleship, I don’t know what you are thinking.

The budget of any organization–a family, a business, a non-profit, and certainly a Church–is a telling document. It tells you what your values are, what your goals are, and what your hopes are. A budget can also be a test: if someone didn’t know your mission, would they be able to tell from your budget?

If you have money…and you are budgeting the best uses of that money in the mission of your parish…what does it mean that the Great Commission isn’t getting any of it?

Yes, we can and should evangelize for free (thanks be to God!). But there is no question that money can be used in helpful ways that promote and strengthen evangelization, especially in parishes that are embracing it for the first time in many generations: Signage outside the Church and in town. Advertising and postcards. Creating welcoming spaces for the curious outside of the sanctuary, small group space. Investing in processes/programs. Investing in missionaries (such as from NET or FOCUS). Investing in coaching or consulting for change (with Evangelical Catholic, or the Amazing Parish, or Catholic Leadership Institute, or me). Hiring a coordinator or director of evangelization….

I’ll never forget looking at an evangelical church’s website and surveying their pastoral team, as they called it. Their “pastor of missions” was front and center, and worked on international mission work rooted in the parish as well as local outreach. They had a director of small groups (which is basically an internal missionary discipleship initiative). And their college outreach (this was a college town) had five people serving in it. To me, it was depressing: because it was so obvious that they were investing joyfully in the Great Commission, it may as well have been outlined in flashing neon lights. The depressing bit was I have never seen a Catholic parish being structured that way. Oh, we could be structured this way. But we aren’t. The typical American Catholic parish of medium size has a pastor, a faith formation/sacramental prep coordinator, a liturgy and music coordinator, and maybe a youth minister. All important ministries. And the only one that typically comes close to mission work is the youth minister, given most kids who become part of “the nones” decide they no longer identify as Catholic by age 13. And considerably over one-third of Gen Z (born between 1997-2012) identifies as a “none.” And keep in mind–plenty identify as Catholic and don’t practice the faith.

So I will be blunt. I honestly don’t know what you are thinking if the budget doesn’t prioritize turning this painful reality around. It’s clear with multiple decades of attendance decline–as well as the rising reality of a secular culture–that this isn’t “going away,” and we can’t keep doing what we are doing a little better and expect a real change. This is a massive cultural shift that requires parish mission re-focus. This is an “all hands on deck” crisis in our Church. And yet…we keep not changing how we invite and share the gospel. I’m not saying it is easy. But I am saying our budget needs to line up with our call in the 21st century.

We are called to invest what we have–gifts, strengths, time, and money–into creating missional parishes. This doesn’t mean doing more, it means doing differently. And honestly, it probably means doing less, but better–focusing our “firepower” on evangelization. We can learn to focus on evangelization and discipleship, and many people and organizations are willing to help. Most importantly, we can rely on God’s word and grace. But we have to cooperate with the mission, in word and in available budget, to share the gospel better within our walls and especially outside our walls.

This is the part of the post where you say: “Susan, you say ‘I don’t know what you are thinking.’ Well, I know what I am thinking. It’s not that easy! We don’t have the budget to pay the people we employ and bills we have. I stay up at night worrying about this! We can’t reinvent ourselves when we are financially going down the drain.”

Next week, we’ll address that difficult concern in Part 3 of this series: the bigger problem…(which does have a solution. Stay tuned!).