The Parish As A Supportive Community
By Monsignor Vincent J. Grimalia, V.G. 

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The Parish Mission Statement is the first step in parish pastoral planning. It succinctly states the understanding of the nature of the parish, “what it is” and the mission or purpose of the parish, “what it is for and what it is to do.”

Parish pastoral planning will look at questions of how the parish expresses itself and fulfills its mission. Through a review of its various resources – spiritual, human, financial – and an evaluation of its facilities and activities, the parish will discover areas of strength and areas of weakness, and it will identify challenges and opportunities for the evangelization of persons and culture, within the parish community and in the surrounding community.

The parish self-study will help the parish to see itself in the context of the mission of the universal and diocesan Church. This parish evaluation will help the parish develop a pastoral plan in cooperation with neighboring parishes and the Diocese.

Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have stressed the importance of prayer, the universal call to holiness and the Eucharist in pastoral planning. Restructuring and reorganization must be based on faith and allow Catholic theology of Church and parish to guide pastoral planning; it cannot merely be based on a sociological model.

There is a strong climate of individualism in our nation, but the Church offers a different, communal perspective on life, and calls us to be a community of disciples, sharing a variety of gifts and vocations for the common good.

Reflecting on the verses of the Acts of the Apostles that inspired our Diocesan Mission Statement, the future-Pope Benedict once stressed the social or communal dimension of faith in these words: “Yet here Luke…speaks of their remaining steadfast in the teaching of the apostles. The Lord passed on the word to the apostles, to the Twelve, and thus his word has become an apostolic word, the word of these people who derived their ministry from him only as a community, as the twelve, and handed it on to us as a community….And thus it is made clear to us that God’s word can never be private property, never my personal possession, but that it lives always in the ‘we’ of the Church, in the people of God built up apostolically. The word does not come to us privately; we receive it through the living tradition of the Church, by sharing here faith and life and that of her living community.” 

Our parishes are communities of disciples in communion with other communities that are members of the Diocese and members of a world-wide Church. Because of this reality, parish pastoral planning cannot be done in an isolated manner of narrow parochialism, but in communion with neighboring parishes and the mission of the Diocese.

There are many aspects of a parish that need to be understood in developing a parish mission statement and a parish pastoral plan. One way is to see it as a community “steadfast in the teaching of the apostles” that can help people to discover meaning in their lives. This aspect of the parish has been described in a homily by then-Cardinal Ratzinger: “Human life is, in the first place, a search for meaning, the search for some message that can show me my path and give me direction.”

These words connect the human search for meaning and each person’s vocation, their “path” and “direction” for their lives. Through these words, we can understand that the parish in its evangelizing mission and in its pastoral care has a responsibility to cultivate the awareness of Vocation and Christian responsibility, as it remains “steadfast in the teaching of the apostles”.

Cardinal Ratzinger, our present Holy Father, in that same homily, also focused on the human need for community: “Because of its whole direction, life is a search for a supportive community, since man is created for community. It is a search for a love that shares, that teaches us to trust, and that can be trusted right to the end in mutual giving.”

The parish is meant to be a place that supports the search for meaning and attitudes that form a supportive community. The parish, parish leadership and the Parish Pastoral Council will be helped in their work of drafting a parish mission statement and parish pastoral planning by keeping their focus on both the search for meaning and the attitudes necessary for building up a supportive Eucharistic community. 

The late Pope John Paul II, in the chapter “Building up the Church as Community” in his book Sources of Renewal, wrote of the importance of developing and expressing various Christian attitudes, if the implementation of the Second Vatican Council were to occur in an authentic way.  He directed attention to the importance of a “community attitude.” He noted that “the Eucharist is the foundation on which the community of the Church is to be built up.”

When he was a cardinal, the late pontiff said: “The unity of the Church as the Body of Christ is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, whose action produces multiplicity but leads to unity; a multiplicity of gifts, vocations and ministries, and the unity of the Mystical Body. Since this Body is also the People of God, we can see that the action of the Holy Spirit bears fruit in that attitude on the part of every one of its members which contributes to their union, that is to the formation of the community of the Church through the bond of the spiritual communion that is distinctive of it.”

This “community attitude” must be expressed in the day-to-day life and practices of the Church and parish community.

Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical God is Love, noted: “ … for in sacramental communion I become one with the Lord, like all the other communicants…Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians… A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented.”

How does this understanding lead our parishes to be welcoming, caring and supportive communities?  

The Mission That Jesus Shares With Us

The mission of the parish is based on the mission Jesus shared with his apostles, a mission that continues in the Catholic Church throughout the world, and in the mission of the Diocese. In God is Love, Pope Benedict noted: “the Church’s deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility of proclaiming the word of God…celebrating the sacraments…and exercising the ministry of charity…These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable.”

When we look at the mission that Jesus shared with his disciples, we readily recall the words in Mark: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature,” and the words in Matthew, “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.”

But we must also recall that before they are sent out, they are given a gift and a responsibility for unity that will give credibility to their mission. In the prayer of Jesus in John 17:20-21, we read: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.”

Monsignor David Bohr was for many years active nationally in the work of evangelization. At that time, he shared the following reflection on the importance of unity and communion in the work of evangelization: “Jesus had prayed at the Last Supper for his disciples that ‘all may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I in you: that the world may believe you sent me’ (Jn 17:21). The Johannine gospel does not conclude, as do the Synoptics, with the great missionary mandate to go and teach all nations. Instead, it tells us that the world will believe in Jesus’ mission if it sees that we are one in him, as he is one in the Father. The author, here, is clearly pointing out that the community of life we share with the Father and the Son becomes evangelization….” 

Father Roman Vanasse also has an important insight for all parishes as they develop their parish mission statement: “The ultimate goal of all Catholic evangelization remains the same: ‘That all may be one, Father, even as you and I are one’ (Jn 17:11). True evangelization means reinforcing whatever promotes unity while at the same time opposing all forces and tendencies which push us to any form of selfishness, or the exaltation of any person, class, culture or nation over any other.”

The importance of recognizing this important aspect of evangelization is verified in a Vatican 1986 study on the reasons why some people are leaving the Church and being attracted to other religious movements. The study raises a question for us to ask: “Why are our parishes not attracting and retaining members?”

The study identified some general reasons: The search for belonging or need for community; the search for answers; the search for wholeness; the search for cultural identity; the search for transcendence. They also identified human needs that include the need for spiritual guidance, vision, participation and involvement and the need to be recognized, to be special.

The identification of these concerns led to the recommendation of pastoral recommendations that can address these concerns and help to revitalize our parishes as well: A sense of community, formation and ongoing formation, a personal and multi-dimensional approach, cultural identity, prayer, worship, participation and leadership. The document advises “If these (pastoral recommendations) are acted upon, the challenge of the sects may prove to have been a useful stimulus for spiritual and ecclesial renewal… They underline the pastoral challenges and the need for pastoral planning.”  

The Parish As An Evangelizing Community

In 2 Corinthians 3:1-3, St. Paul wrote to the community: “You are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, shown to be a letter of Christ administered by us, written not in ink but by the Spirit of the living God…” In other words, through the life of the community, people can see what he has preached and how he formed them. It is the community that is now an evangelizing experience both for its members and for outsiders that can be attracted by what they see and hear in the lives of the community members. In our time, the parish has a similar responsibility and opportunity.

Commentating on the importance of “a formation of the heart” for those involved in the charitable work of the Church, Pope Benedict states: “…they need to be led to that encounter with God in Christ which awakens their love and opens their spirits to others. As a result, love of neighbor will no longer be for them a commandment imposed, so to speak, from without, but as a consequence deriving from their faith, a faith which becomes active through love (cf.Gal.5:6).”

These words can help all Christians witness to the Gospel in their homes and in their places of work; to evangelize through their way of living. The Holy Father also noted: “A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak.”

When the parish staff and volunteers realize that they participate in the evangelizing mission of the parish, it will help them not only to discover new meaning in their work, but give them an opportunity to model for the parish, how to evangelize in the workplace.

To this end, prayerful reflection on the parish mission statement will be most helpful for parish staff and volunteers. How they relate to one another, how they cooperate, how they form a working Christian community, how visitors and parishioners are served, how business is conducted, how the telephone is answered – all of these examples can give a powerful evangelizing message and help to build up the Christian community of the parish.

Members of the parish staff are very often the first persons that a parishioner, a visitor or neighbor meets. That first contact is very important, because each person comes with a need or a request. Staff and volunteer hospitality, kindness and efficiency can not only help the parish’s reputation as a welcoming, helping and caring community, but also help the parish in its community-building and evangelizing mission. The whole parish and all of its members can be, as St. Paul claims, a “letter of Christ.”