The Culture of an Amazing Parish When people use the word ‘culture’ as it pertains to organizations, it can mean a lot of things. All too often, it is associated with cosmetic and surface-level artifacts like an organization’s furniture and office layout, or even...
A Case for Parish Consolidations In many dioceses throughout the United States, parishes are being consolidated or combined in groups of two, three and even four. The rationale for doing this seems to be the desire to improve efficiencies and to better leverage our...
Only the Pastor Can Take the First Step The journey toward becoming an amazing parish does not begin by reading a book or attending a conference or participating in a webinar. It does not happen with a group of people sitting around a table discussing the...
A Simple Christmas Idea With less than a week to go before so many new people come to your parish for their annual or semi-annual visit, it’s not too late to think about taking a slightly different approach to this year’s homily. Now, I certainly understand how busy...
The Courage of an American Pastor Being the pastor of a parish requires courage, but the nature of that courage is going to differ depending on where that parish is in the world. In many parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia, courage is a stark matter of risking...
Paid Staff vs. Volunteers One of the most dangerous distinctions we make when it comes to people who work and serve in our parishes is seeing them as either employees or volunteers. From a technical standpoint, I certainly understand the necessity of this...
Let's Do Something A friend of mine, I’ll call him John because that’s his name, decided to leave the consulting firm where he and I worked years ago, and on the day before his departure, an executive of the firm did one of those wonderful “exit interviews” with him. ...
Evangelization and Discipleship in the "Workplace" No, this short essay is not about bringing Jesus to the secular world, as crucial as that is. What I’m thinking about is the workplace that we call a parish. If parishes are ever going to teach people how to bring...
Something remarkably simple happened recently, and I want to share it with every parish in the world. I was at a convocation of priests recently where a handful of pastors who had attended The Amazing Parish conference presented to their peers many of the practices...
A friend of mine who works in a parish recently asked me to help him assess how well his parish was doing in regard to what it learned during the Amazing Parish Conference. I responded by asking him a series of questions which provides something of a self-assessment...