Adult Formation  |  What, Why, & How

Living as Missionary Disciples as the Blueprint for Parish Renewal

In Pope Francis’s 2013 speech to the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, he called for “a shared commitment to a pastoral plan which brings us back to the essential and which is solidly focused on the essential; that is, on Jesus Christ. To get diverted by many secondary or superfluous things does not help; what helps is to focus on the fundamental reality, which is the encounter with Christ, with his mercy and with his love, and to love our brothers and sisters as he has loved us.”

This pastoral planning framework suggests six key dimensions to assess the current status or pulse of the parish, establish an effective ministry, and develop a successful pastoral plan:

[1]  A planning process is permeated with prayer before, during, and after the process. Prayer is the most important work that the planning team will engage in. This is often an afterthought in pastoral planning but must be kept at the forefront of pastoral planning efforts.

[2]  A parish plan provides a direction focused on bearing fruit not just on having activities. It is intentional, visible, and based on well-thought-out, fruit-producing outcomes. This fruit is clearly rooted in the teachings and pastoral ministry principles of the Church.

[3]  The parish seeks out effective pastoral leaders who can inspire others with an engaging vision of missionary discipleship. These pastoral leaders, through their own witness of faith and holiness of life, lead people to a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, who in turn invites us into a fuller conversion and witness.

[4]  The content of services and ministries is rooted in the doctrine of the Church and supported by foundational pastoral practices (for example, principles derived from the National Directory for Catechesis) that point parishioners toward and prepare them for discipleship.

[5]  The parish ministries effectively engage people through welcome, inspiration, and effective communication. Meeting people where they are at and listening to them is crucial in beginning a relationship for the missionary disciple process.

[6]  The parish commits itself to being a good steward of its human and financial resources, using its resources prudently and responsibly and continually assessing the effectiveness of its efforts.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Living as Missionary Disciples: A Resource for Evangelization.



 

During the Pontificate of Pope Francis there has been an unprecedented quality and clarity of how and what the Lord is saying to the Church through the Holy Father. Whether it is because of trends that have decimated Christianity in Europe, and which now have teeth in the United States, or whether it is purely an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear is able to notice that something dramatic is happening in the Catholic Church in the United States. We are called to “make disciples”.  The call to make disciples and the alignment that flows from there starts with the very words of Jesus in Matthew 28. They are His very words. He explicitly commissions us to, “Go and make disciples.”

In this “great commission” of Matthew 28, Jesus gave us a mission; He gave us the mission. Jesus gave us our mission statement, “Make disciples.” Far too often our parish mission statements are long, cumbersome, and complex. They are so complex most parishioners dismiss them. We consistently have to explain our mission statements in order for parishioners to understand their purpose. Unfortunately, “If you have to make statements to clarify your statements then your statements aren’t making statements.” Perhaps our parish mission statements are too complex. Perhaps our mission statements have already been given to us. The mission from Jesus could be the mission statement for every parish, “Make disciples.” The Church has carried this as Her mission from the very moment that Jesus ascended to the Father in Matthew 28. While the word disciple is not an ordinary part of our Catholic vocabulary this does not mean that it hasn’t remained a central focus of the Church for the last 2,000 years. For over two millennia the Church has spoken of the need to make disciples. Sometimes she has been explicit in her teachings, while most of the time the words “make disciples” are implicit. Certainly the documents of the Second Vatican Council, as well as the writings of Pope Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis have reclaimed not only the call, but also the specific language of making disciples. In fact, prior to the 2017 release of Living as Missionary Disciples, the US Bishops’ governing document on evangelization was actually entitled Go and Make Disciples released in 2002.

 

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From May through December of 2016 the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux went through a comprehensive planning process. There was a emphasis on forming disciples which was to serve as the golden thread woven throughout all of the planning. The Bishop was clear with his desire: the renewal of parish life. The Holy Father Pope Francis had been speaking about the call to make disciples. If “making disciples” was to be the golden thread, we needed to ask the question: How do you make a disciple? Specifically: How do you make one in a parish? In our diocese? With our resources? Yet, before we could answer how do you make a disciple we first needed to answer the question: What is a disciple?
 

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The Need for Pruning and the Call to Bear Fruit

The current blueprint for parish-based evangelization in the United States is the 2017 USCCB document entitled Living as Missionary Disciples. There, we read:

“The parish must be concerned with bearing fruit throughout the discipleship process. This shift in focus ensures that attention is directed toward pruning what is ineffective so that new life and fruit can occur. Throughout Scripture, the metaphor of fruit is used many different times and in many ways in reference to mission. Jesus commands the disciples to ‘go and bear fruit that will remain’ (John 15:16). The work of pastoral planning ought to bear fruit and also involve effective pruning through planning, organization, and implementation so that new life and growth can occur.”

“A planning framework focused on fruitfulness suggests an approach to pastoral ministry that discerns what will be fruitful, what needs to be pruned, and how weeds will be separated from new growth. This means, at the start of the process, identifying the overall fruit and outcomes that a parish or diocese desires for its ministry and aligning programs and ministries to achieve this result.”

If we expect to see renewal within our parishes we must begin to discipline ourselves with the practice of focus. Practically speaking, parish leaders would do well to ask specific questions in order to remain focused on the mission that has been given to us. It is important that we ask why we are doing something so that we can ask ourselves what do we expect to see in people’s lives because of what we are doing? Thinking with the mind of Living as Missionary Disciples requires us to know what we are doing and so that we are clear what type of fruit we expect to see in someone’s life.

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