The theme for this year at Holy Name is, “Come be fed, go feed others.” As the parish administrator, I have tried to assess the theme from a strategic planning and parish vision perspective. Is the parish giving its members adequate spiritual sustenance? If we are shouldn’t our members be serving (feeding) others? Are the members serving/feeding others?
Absolutely, many of our members participate in the activities at the parish and are energized to become better Catholic Christians and so there is definitely some success. However the parish leadership spends a lot of time and effort trying to tweak our operations and ministry offerings to motive the majority of our members who are not yet inspired to participate and who attend Mass far less frequently.
I think part of the problem is that many of us approach the question of participation from a consumer mentality. We approach our lives and how we spend our time with trying to get the perceived greatest return on investment. I don’t go to Mass because I don’t get anything out of it. I don’t participate in activities because there is a charge for them and it’s not worth it. I don’t give to the church because I don’t cost them anything and they don’t do anything for me.
This is a problem. I would hope that we try to see our life and all we have as a gift. We are given the gift of life and many other individual gifts uniquely combined to create a God-containing being. Once one comes to fully understand fullness of this truth, then coming to Mass and participating in the life of the parish is a vital opportunity to share your gifts with others. It is what you bring and give to others by being here as much as it is what you take away.
Maybe the homilies don’t always inspire you and maybe your life is busy with children and sports and with just keeping your head above water. Even with these challenges and maybe because of them, we all need to come and share our presents (gifts) and presents (attending something) with others in our community. We all need to understand that we have been given so much and we will have more joyous and peace-filled lives if we make it a habit of acknowledging and sharing these gifts.
So for all of you who are not attending or participating in the life of the parish, I would strongly encourage you to habitually bring your very gifted being to share with others. Make a point to come and be fed during this Lenten season and feed others both here and in our community with the gift of you.
January 21, 2010 at 1:38 am |
Your posts are always so thoughtful and thought-provoking and I enjoy reading them. This time I’d like to respond, because this last weekend I came to Mass hoping to be fed and came away only aggravated.
I had hoped to be comforted by community prayers for the people of Haiti, and had a check with me for the collection I anticipated after reading in the paper all week that ALL Catholic parishes in the Archdiocese would have one. A single mention of Haiti in the Prayers of the Faithful seemed meager to me, but to postpone the collection just because another was scheduled really seems rigid and unresponsive. (By definition, emergencies are unplanned.) My reaction to the disappointment was to dwell on the other irritations I have with the Church for the rest of the Mass. Not the most mature response, I realize, but it leads me to my question.
You seem to be wondering what affects a parishioner’s participation. Perhaps there are others like me who sometimes question whether it’s their expectations that are wrong, or if they are just in the wrong place. It doesn’t happen to me every week, but I’m wondering … what is the acceptable frequency?
January 21, 2010 at 3:27 am |
Thanks for your kind words – it’s good to know someone is out there.
In my position in the parish my attendance is a double-edged sword. I get to see all the effort, faith and beauty of the work that gets done behind the scenes to make things happen but this can also seem like making wieners at times (just eat the hot dog – you don’t want to see how they are made). It’s impossible for me to leave all these things behind and just enter the church doors to pray and worship. I always have to look up and see if there are water stains or lights that have burnt out and evaluate nearly everything that happens. So I can no longer approach evaluating my experiences without strong biases.
With respect to last weekend – I got the email about the second collection and the first thought I had was I sure hope we don’t have something already scheduled. It didn’t turn out that way and so it was a tough decision which collection to bump. Either way someone would have probably disagreed with the decision. I think the more troubling aspect was (as you pointed out) the delay of the second collection coupled with not raising the tragedy up sufficiently in prayer.
Finally, to your question, I don’t have an answer. From a statistical perspective, it would appear that we (the Church and our parish) are not sufficiently or frequently meeting expectations and so the non-active Catholics and former Catholics in evangelical churches now dwarf the number of regular Sunday attendees. It’s interesting you use the word ‘place’ in your comments. It can have a number of meanings in this context of worship and I guess with one’s eternal fate in the balance, one should have some comfort and assurance that they are in the right place (religion, mental frame, location, parish).
For what it’s worth, I think there would be an increased sense of belonging – or having the feeling you are in the right place – if the relationships among members and between members and the clergy were stronger. I have a few ideas to build these relationships but it’s tough to take on new responsibilities when the existing ones aren’t going away.
Thanks again for your comments.
I would approach your faith journey