I have a friend who is Pastor of a big Church. He says it “sleeps” 700. This is a sadly common description of many Catholic congregations: asleep. Churches that need waking up have prevailing cultures of detachment and shallow commitment which almost always includes large numbers of people coming late and leaving early for weekend services […]
Category: Team Building
A big factor in our growth at Nativity was getting over our unwillingness to learn and borrow methods from growing, often non-Catholic, churches. But in the process we also had to learn what to look for. We realized that adopting successful methods from other churches required first paying attention to their ministry’s purpose-driven strategy, not […]
Everybody has found themselves caught on a team with an ineffective team member. Maybe it was somebody who didn’t want to be there and passive-aggressively resisted the team’s efforts, or worked against them. Maybe it was just someone who was ineffective, lazy, uninterested, or miscast. On the other hand, we have probably also had the […]
Every parishioner can tell you what a pastor should do. Most would be more than happy to do so. And just try and stop some of them. But rarely is there a great deal of unanimity about what those things are. Sometimes there is, in fact, opposing views about what we should be doing. And […]
Everybody could probably tell you what a pastor should do. But the list of what a pastor, or parish leader of any kind, shouldn’t do is actually much longer. And it is as important to know what not to do as knowing your to-do list. Here are a few, in no particular order. #1. The pastor […]
We’re all looking for the silver bullet, the magic formula, the secret sauce that is going to take our church to the next level in terms of health and growth, discipleship and evangelization. Of course, there is no substitute for hard work and sustained effort, and you need a healthy team of leaders to make […]
When it comes to building a healthy parish (and a healthy parish will be a growing parish) the Eucharist is the source and the summit of our life together. Beyond that are the habits of discipleship: prayer, giving, ministry, evangelization. These are a given for a church to even be a church. But from a […]
At Nativity we often find ourselves defying common wisdom and standard practice, much to the ongoing astonishment of many colleagues and friends. We don’t do it just to be different, we do it because so much of what goes on in churchworld no longer works. But church-people keep doing it anyway, because, well, that’s what […]
Well, we had a beautiful and inspiring celebration this year at the Maryland State Fair for Christmas Eve. Several observations noted in passing, in no particular order: – It was our 10th year there and to mark the occasion we had perhaps about 10,000 people, fairly well distributed between the two Masses. There were 4,484 […]
As we argued in Rebuilt one of the, if not the main problem in parishes today is culture. Culture is a system of beliefs that guide a community’s behaviors, shapes their priorities, and ultimately determines the allocation of resources. More than ever these days we hear culture discussed in the secular community, especially when it […]
