NOVEMBER 2015 SAINT PAUL S PARISH THE NEXT TEN YEARS MEETING SUMMARY

NOVEMBER 2015 SAINT PAUL S PARISH THE NEXT TEN YEARS MEETING SUMMARY

CONTENTS Contents... 1 The Next Ten Years... 2 Our People... 2 Parish Life Today... 4 Facilities... 4 Finances... 5 Church Size Matters... 6 Churchworld... 7 God s Purpose for Church... 7 The Five Systems... 8 Saint Benedict Church... 8 Church of the Nativity... 10 Concluding Thoughts... 12 Sources and Further Reading... 13 St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 1

THE NEXT TEN YEARS We are blessed to have a large parish with a beautiful church. We have no debt currently and a number of good investments that continue to benefit our parish. We have the largest congregation in the city of Summerside and we are the second largest Catholic Church in Prince Edward Island. Many of our volunteers are so passionate about the parish that they are involved in not just one but two or three or four ministries. Some even give the equivalent of a part-time job to the parish every week. We have welcomed people into full communion with the Catholic Church almost every year over the past ten and there are two considering entrance into the Church this year. Having said all this, we believe we are at a critical point in our history. Our church and rectory are showing their age. Income is trending downward while expenses are trending upward. Demographic changes and engagement rates will mean that in the future we will have few parishioners who will have to support our community and facilities which will only increase the strain on our finances. We have seen other parishes in our Diocese and in the Maritimes that have left things too long. Aware of the trends, they did not respond or left their response too late and the problems became irreversible. We love our parish. We do not want to see this happen here. So, we have begun a discussion about the challenges we face in order that, together and united to God, we will find a solution that will ensure the Gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed in our church for ages to come. What we do in the next ten is vital to the health of our mission. In this document you will find a draft summary of the meeting that was held on November 7, 2015. It contains some important information about our situation today, some of the cultural factors that are influencing us today, and introduces two Catholic parishes that have faced some similar problems and whose response, we believe, can be an inspiration to us as we seek to find our path forward through the challenges ahead. OUR PEOPLE As we already said, we have a large congregation and many of them are passionate about our parish. However here, as in many places in North America, we are affected by an aging demographic. For us, this will mean an increase in funerals and a decrease in baptisms and this alone will be a significant factor in shrinking our congregation in the next few. In addition, the rate of engagement in our parish among the senior population is higher than the rate of engagement within the younger population of our parish and this will escalate the trend. We know there are many reasons why people choose not to engage in parish life, including: Unfulfilling liturgies (music, preaching, etc.) Lack of community life and connectedness Lack of quality programming (children, youth, families, seniors, etc.) Lack of small groups Expectations that are too high or too low Distrust of organized religion Detachment from religious concerns As we move forward, we will need to address some of these matters. St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 2

Information Charts 1600 Population of Summerside - 2011 census 1400 1,340 1,300 1200 1000 870 915 1,010 1,070 860 865 875 975 1,045 1,180 1,180 830 800 690 640 600 400 405 265 200 0 0 to 4 5 to 9 10 to 14 15 to 19 20 to 24 25 to 29 30 to 34 35 to 39 40 to 44 45 to 49 50 to 54 55 to 59 60 to 64 65 to 69 70 to 74 75 to 79 80 to 84 85 to 89 145 90 to 94 35 95 to 99 5 100 and over FIGURE 1POPULATION OF SUMMERSIDE, 2011 CENSUS FIGURE 2 BAPTISMS, CONFIRMATIONS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS AT ST. PAUL'S OVER THE LAST TEN YEARS St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 3

PARISH LIFE TODAY Sunday (and Saturday evening) Eucharist is, unsurprisingly, the focal point of our community life. Our catechetical program, for all the changes, still has very good registration levels but continues to face challenges with regards to serving the numbers that register. Masses on weekdays are well attended and we have a number of devotional practices and groups as well as service and community oriented groups operating in the parish. Unfortunately, many of these groups are not seeing growth at this time meaning it will be hard for them to continue operating in the future. For those who want to get engaged more in parish life we offer a number of different ministries but we are also lacking ministry in key areas. Existing Opportunities Pastoral Committee Finance Committee Catholic Women s League Knights of Columbus Saint Vincent de Paul Society Hospitality ministries Hospital visitation ministries Catechetic and youth ministries Sacramental preparation ministries Liturgical ministries Money Counters Missing Ministries Outreach to seniors Pre-school and children ministries Young adult ministries Ministry to families / parents Small group opportunities Community outreach Evangelization Grief ministries Currently a lack of volunteers, staff, and finances holds us back from expanding and improving the pastoral care of our parishioners. FACILITIES If you have ever come in through the middle doors at the back of the church when no body is there and taken a moment to look, you cannot help but notice that we have a beautiful church. Our parish center continues to meet many of our needs and our cemetery grounds are well kept. Over the last ten we have engaged in projects large and small to keep our buildings up-to-date. However, finances have dampened our ability to complete many projects and as a result, some projects have been on hold for more than 20 now. As we go forward, we will need to find ways to fund these projects because the longer we defer maintenance, the larger and more expensive these projects will become. Completed Projects New boilers for heating system Partial repairs to Winter Street parking lot Sanctuary floor renovation (in progress) Partial lighting system upgrades Sound tech improvements Some insulation at house Garage repairs at house Hot water heater replacement (church and house) Water softener system replacement (church) Chimney repairs St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 4

Projects for the Future Church roof insulation Tower repairs Terrazzo repairs Complete parking lot project Painting interior of church Stone re-pointing Grading and storm drain improvements Security upgrades Roof repairs Flooring repairs Digital heating controls Larger gutters Main entrance/reception upgrades Chapel Parish center window replacement Refinish and repair pews House repairs/upgrade/relocation FINANCES While we saw a slight increase last year, our income trend over the last ten has been downward while our expenses continue to increase. While we have managed to stay out of debt, the challenges we face are making this increasingly difficult. Financially, our biggest areas of concern today are the building projects listed above and our regular Sunday collection amounts as these cover the vast majority of our expenses. The building fund income amounts to approximately $30,000 each year which is not enough to adequately deal with the number of projects we are facing. The Regular Collection averages around $360,000 each year which is not enough to pay our bills. We rely on investments such as the Walter Reid Fund to cover the shortfall. Our tight budget means we have no potential for expanding our ministries and no cushion to fall back on in the case of surprises. In fact, we have had to let staff go in recent in order to make up for the shortfall. Our investments fall into a few categories. We have a fund for the upkeep of the organ, a fund for cemetery related expenses, a fund for building related projects (mentioned already), and our Rev. Walter Reid Fund. Recently, the Walter Reid fund received a substantial donation that we were finally able to report on in our last annual statement. It is impossible to predict how much this fund will generate from year to year but over the last few it has generated approximately $30,000 each year. The Walter Reid Fund bylaws indicate that monies from this fund may only be used for religious education and/or family life education as determined by the Finance Committee. Since receiving this donation, we ve used the income from this fund to offset the costs of our catechetical and youth ministry programs as well as fund the sound system upgrades in the church. A Comparison When we compare the donations at our parish to much smaller churches in Summerside we are giving at less than half their rate. We give approximately $6 per person attending Mass each week while other congregations are giving close to $40 per person based on average weekly attendance. This is a significant difference. Two Scenarios What could an increase in our collection look like? If we were able to increase weekly giving by 50%, our annual collection would increase by somewhere between $90,320 and $287,712. This is a significant increase St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 5

and would go a long way to improving the financial health and viability of our parish, allowing us to expand ministry and improve our progress on building related projects. In this scenario we could either hire 2.5 ministry staff or tackle our building project list in approximately 5 as opposed to the 20 it will take at our current income levels. If we were to double weekly giving, we would still be at less than half of the rate of some other churches but we would increase our annual collection by an amazing $240,080 to $503,616. Under this scenario we could hire three staff members and complete our project list in 3.5 rather than the 20 we expect it will take at our current rate of income. CHURCH SIZE MATTERS Following Dr. Timothy Keller s church size classification system, St. Paul s parish church falls into the category of a very large church (sometimes called a megachurch ) since our weekly attendance is greater than 800 people. 1 It is important to take our size into consideration because it affects every aspect of parish life. According to Dr. Timothy Keller 2, a typical pastor can only adequately pastor 200 people. When the weekly attendance rate of a congregation increases beyond this number a church must add more ministry staff to ensure the pastoral needs of the community are met in any adequate way. Once you get to 500 people in regular attendance a congregation will likely need to add one staff person for every 75-100 people. Following Keller s principle, a congregation the size of St. Paul s should have 8 14 ministry staff positions. Currently we have 4 (three full-time and two half-time). Ideally, we need to add 4 10 more ministry staff positions to adequately meet the needs of our congregation and the finances. It must be noted that these numbers assume a large and well-trained body of volunteers. As a church gets larger, other factors must be considered in any conversation about pastoral planning. As a church gets larger everything gets more complex senior pastor must spend more time teaching and preaching (sacraments and liturgies) senior pastor must spend a larger portion of time with staff and volunteer leaders many ministries must be given to staff members more decision making authority must be given to staff and volunteer leaders ministries become more specialized we must become more intentional about everything we do from community building to welcoming, to communication, to volunteer recruitment we must increase the number of small groups we must be more open to change we must offer more options 1 We average between 1,000 to 1,200 people per weekend. 2 Keller, Leadership and Church Size Dynamics. St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 6

CHURCHWORLD Size dynamics are one important factor affecting parish life but our understanding of the purpose of a parish community has an affect on our life as a parish as well. In a section of their book Rebuilt, Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran of the Church of the Nativity talk about some of the visions or purposes that can become guiding factors in parish life but that are actually harmful to it: Get it over with approach where getting communion quickly and/or getting in and out of the catechism program quickly motivates our actions Militant/Triumphant approach where a particular version of liturgy (whether more liberal or more conservative) is proposed as the only way The museum approach where our actions are guided primarily by concerns related to the building and/or history of the congregation The country club approach where we are looking for the parish to be a community of likeminded individuals so that our ideas are not challenged The church for the kids approach where we want the church to do something for our children but we ourselves do not feel a need to grow, change and be challenged by the Gospel The personality cult approach where everything depends on having the right pastor with the right personality. The boutique church approach where one particular issue (be it a social justice issue, some political agenda, or a certain style of music, etc.) becomes the only issue we are concerned with. A single cause agenda. To guard ourselves from falling into these approached to church we must continuously ask ourselves, what is God s purpose for Church? GOD S PURPOSE FOR CHURCH Why does the Church exist? Why does a parish exist? These questions are foundational questions that we must answer. If we are not following God s purpose for Church, it should be no surprise when the great things we want for our parish do not happen. His purpose must be our guiding principle. So what is it? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. 3 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. 4 These two passages from the Gospel of Matthew reveal God s purpose and mission for the Church. We are called first to love God and neighbor and then to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, and teaching them the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything we do everything we do must come back to this. To quote Rick Warren, A Great Commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will grow a Great 3 Matthew 22:37-40 4 Matthew 28:19-20 St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 7

Church. 5 Some of the approaches to church mentioned above (see Churchworld ) may serve these purposes but we must always come back to these foundational statements that reveal God s purpose for the Church. THE FIVE SYSTEMS Rick Warren s Five Systems model serves as a great way to guide our prayers, conversations, and thinking as we seek to incarnate God s purpose for Church into our parish life. The Five Systems are: 1. Worship 2. Community 3. Discipleship 4. Service 5. Evangelization These Five Systems cover virtually every aspect of parish life. As we keep the conversation going about the future of our parish it will be helpful to keep them in mind. But we also need inspiration as we discuss these matters. For that, let us turn to two Catholic parishes who have faced challenges similar to ours and see what they have done. SAINT BENEDICT CHURCH Saint Benedict Church is a new parish formed in Halifax, Nova Scotia out of the closure and merger of a few parishes. The people of these communities came together and build one new community, complete with a brand new church building. In the process, they began asking the foundational question about God s purpose for church. Their congregation is similar in size to ours and shares the Atlantic Canadian culture. They determined that the biggest crisis we face today is a crisis of identity. Catholics as individuals and parishes have lost sight of who we really are. 6 In defining who they are (and want to become) they came up with a vision of what they expect their parish to be and what they expect from the members of their parish. It is because of the interplay of these two aspects that they were able to meet the challenges we face and become a thriving parish community. Roughly following the Five Systems of Rick Warren here is how they talk about their vision for their parish 7 : Worship We gather to celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday (the Lord s Day). We expect all members of the parish to gather for Sunday worship unless they are unable to do so because of illness or travel. It is when we gather on the Lord s Day to be nourished by Word and Sacrament that we remember who we are and are given food for the journey. In this task we fulfill our call to worship the God who created us and are given the grace we need to continue to love God and one another. 5 Warren, The Purpose Driven Church. 6 Mallon, Divine Renovation. 7 Ibid. St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 8

Growth To become a follower of Jesus Christ is to be his disciple. Jesus said, This is the will of my Father, that you should become my disciples (John 15:8). A disciple literally means one who is learning. We believe that learning and growing are lifelong tasks. When we cease to learn and grow we cease to be disciples and will experience stagnation in our spiritual lives. We expect every member of Saint Benedict Parish to commit to at least one program of faith formation each year. We need to remember that our commitment to growth helps those around us to fulfil their own commitment. In this way our Church becomes healthy. Serve Jesus said, The Son of Man came not to be served, by to serve (Mark 10:45). The essence of the Christian life is to serve God and one another. The Church is not healthy when it forgets this truth. We are called not just to serve individually, but to do so corporately as the Church. This way we give witness that the Church is the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. We also believe that every parishioner, without exception, has something to offer, something they do well and can do for the sake of the Kingdom of God. We expect every parishioner to serve the parish by being involved in at least one ministry each year. Connect The Church is a community of believers and not simply a collection of individuals who gather for one hour a week. Christian community is one in which we are truly accountable to one another and accountable for one another. This task needs to be taken up with due diligence as the size of our parish makes it a real challenge. We expect every parishioner to contribute to the task of building community by seeing themselves as an integral part of the life of this parish and being intentional about reaching out and connecting with others. Give We expect all parishioners to give generously of their financial resources in proportion to what they have received. We give not to just meet a few basic needs or to pay the costs of maintaining the Church building and a few staff. We give out of gratitude to God, and the more the parish receives, the more we can do for the building up of God s Kingdom, the more we can help the poor, the more programs we can run to help others grow. No one is excluded from this. If someone has less, they give less. If someone has more, they give more. This offering, which we make at Sunday Eucharist, is a key part of our worship. Another major change that has benefitted them greatly is that they hired many staff people and have restructured the leadership body of their parish. The Pastoral Council became primarily a visioning and accountability body that meets every two months. They look at long-term planning and seek to hold everything in the parish accountable to the mission and vision. Since they have so much going on, the created a leadership team that consists of the staff and volunteer leaders. This group meets once a week to report in on what they are doing and to discuss and plan short term (less than one year) planning. In their parish, staff and volunteer leaders are given real authority over their ministries and are ultimately responsible to the pastor. St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 9

CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY The Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland was in a different situation. They had existed as a parish for many decades and had relatively good finances. They had an older building but it was manageable. They had many programming opportunities for children, youth, and seniors and an active community life. You might think this would translate into a healthy parish but it did not. Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran noticed that despite all this, engagement rates were dropping fast, especially among the younger populations. After much research and prayerful reflection, they identified the biggest problem in their parish as a spiritual problem. Parishioners there were, for the most part, religious consumers (and demanding ones at that) and not really disciples. Consumer Church vs. Missional Church In a consumer driven church church is seen as a dispenser of religious goods and services. People come to church to be fed, to have their needs met through quality programs, and to have the professionals teach their children about God. A phrase often on the lips of religious consumers who describe their relationship with church is I go to church. A missional church, by contrast, is a body of people sent on a mission who gather in community for worship, community encouragement and teaching from the Word in addition to what they are self-feeding themselves throughout the week. When these parishioners describe their relationship with the church they are likely to express it as, I am the church. Membership in the Church is part of their self-identity. Research and First Attempts After they hired a professional research team to research the state of their parish they found many of the same challenges we find here. They began trying to fix the problems they found rather than seriously examining the system and culture that led to these problems in the first place. In their book Rebuilt, they offer a list of things they learned in those early attempts to meet the challenges they were facing. This list is very helpful to us today so that we do not make the same mistakes they did as we have our own conversations about the challenges we face. Here it is: We assumed if we did more and did it better, people would grow in their maturity and commitment. We thought that if we did more and did it better, people would automatically give more (money). If we did more and did it better, we took it for granted that people would automatically get involved and help out. We looked to our stalwart church-goers (senior citizens) as our natural allies as we tried to move forward. Little did we appreciate how detached the second and third generations of demanding consumers had grown. We didn t understand how marginalized the whole enterprise of faith and religion had become in the lives of our parishioners. We didn t understand how profoundly uninterested the non-church-going population had grown, how distrustful of any outreach efforts we made, and how cynical they could be about all organized religion. We were not turned toward God. We were not relying on his leadership. And we were not looking to go where he was blessing. We thought this would be easy. St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 10

All of these beliefs and assumptions proved wrong in their case. Increasing the quality and amount of programming did not translate into deeper commitments and financial gains. The church stalwarts, in their case, did not want change and fought everything. They underestimated the cultural change that had happened over the last 50 to 60 with regards to attitudes about religion. And they did not consider God s purpose for Church first. Today, their vision statement reads: Vision: Make church matter by growing disciples who are growing disciples among the dechurched Catholics in north Baltimore and influencing churches to do the same elsewhere. And to examine their values using Warren s Five Systems, here is how they see live their vision: 8 Worship We believe in orthodox Christianity, as taught by the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. The Eucharistic celebration is the source and summit of our faith that we seek to live and serve with the whole of our lives in vibrant ways. We value this dynamic orthodoxy. Excellence in our worship honours God. We value excellence. Discipleship We believe the Bible is the inspired, infallible Word of God. Our preaching and messages strive to break open the relevance of the Bible to our daily lives. Changing and growing into the likeness of Christ is not just about greater knowledge of our faith, it s doing what God s word says we must do. We value life-change. Fellowship We believe that our Baptism forms us into a family that is constantly nourished and renewed by all the sacraments, which teach us to love one another as Christ loved us. We strive to build a church culture through small groups where people are open and authentic, especially about their need to grow and change. We value doing life-changing together. Service We believe that the Holy Spirit has prepared works for us to do that will advance the kingdom of Christ. We recognize God s call to our church to serve both within our parish and also beyond: in our city, our country, and the world. In the service of the Lord we can always do more. We value that challenge. Evangelization We believe that Jesus came to seek and save the lost. We heed God s command to share his name with the world. We look for the opportunity to invite dechurched Catholics to join us. As a parish church, we want insiders to reach outsiders. We value growth and health. In their book Rebuilt, they are open and honest about their mistakes, about the things that did not work, and about the things the challenges they still face. However, their efforts have succeeded in making the Church of the Nativity not only a powerful force for the Gospel in Timonium, but a church that is having a profound influence on parishes all across North America. 8 White and Corcoran, Rebuilt. St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 11

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Our parish has a long history in Summerside. Many people over the decades have encountered God here in powerful and life-transforming ways. Today, the immense changes in our society over the last 50-60, the size of our parish, the approaching demographic shifts, and the identity crisis that is affecting many Catholics and Catholic parishes requires us to meet new challenges. Given the size of the challenges that we face and the amount of time and resources that we will require to face them, what we do over the next ten will greatly determine the next fifty or more of our parish. In some ways, the question we must answer is not so much what to do but what to do first? Before we can answer this question though we ask a more foundational question: what is God s purpose for the Church? Will we be guided by God s purposes? Are we willing to make the important changes necessary to meet these new challenges? I have no illusions. What I am proposing here will be difficult. For some, it will mean a major shift in our vision of what church is and what our place in it is. Certainly it will take us all out of our comfort zone. But Jesus never said being his follower would be easy. He said, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me (Matthew 16:24). If we take God s Word as our guide, we will see amazing things happen in our midst as we become the parish God wants us to be. St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 12

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING Keller, Timothy. Leadership and Church Size Dynamics. Vineyard: Cutting Edge, 2006. Mallon, James. Divine Renovation. Toronto, ON: Novalis, 2014. Warren, Rick. The Purpose Driven Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995. White, Michael and Tom Corcoran. Rebuilt. Notre Dame, IN: Ava Maria, 2013. St. Paul s Parish Summerside, PE 13