MADISON — On July 1, every parish in the Diocese of Madison will be joining one of 30 new “pastorates,” or a grouping of parishes under the leadership of a single pastor or administrator, with other priests serving alongside him as parochial vicars as part of the Into the Deep strategic planning process.
Into the Deep is our effort to realign our resources so that we can better accomplish and live out the Church’s mission, both now and for generations to come.
We know the Church’s mission. Jesus gave it to the apostles Himself, to Go Make Disciples, proclaim the Gospel to every creature, and Baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This has not changed since Christ’s ascension, 2,000 years ago.
Here in Madison, for the past three years, we have been working to equip the laity of the diocese to have the competence and the confidence to engage others in this mission, to invite them to taste the abundance that we have found in Christ to be the meaning and salvation of our lives.
Renewed embrace of the mission
This renewed embrace of the Church’s mission leads us to think strategically about how we can best utilize our resources: Our priests, deacons, Religious and lay leadership, staffs, buildings, monies — namely, all our treasures that God uses for the proclamation of the Gospel and the growth of the Church — to subvert the difficult numbers that would indicate a decline, because we know and trust that the Holy Spirit is always in front of us, leading us to go boldly forward.
This allows us to realign our resources, so it is:
- Less about maintenance and more about mission.
- Less about buildings and more about people.
- An opportunity to free up our priests to spend more of their time doing the pastoral work of preaching the Gospel, celebrating the sacraments, and shepherding our beloved people — what they set out to do when they entered the seminary following God’s call to a vocation to the priesthood.
Our vision for parishes is that they be:
- Vital and spiritually alive communions of discipleship.
- That we joyfully and reverently worship God through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
- That our children are fully formed in the fullness of the faith.
- That our schools are turning out disciples of Jesus Christ.
- That we reach out to our brothers and sisters in need and find Christ in them, in His distressing disguise.
Our mission here and now is to lay a structure, a strong foundation, and a vision so that, decades from now, our children and grandchildren will also know, love, and serve Jesus because we were bold, we were visionary, we were generous in building on the legacy of our forebearers, by preparing our Church for the decades to come. That we will remain vital, abundant, and flourishing — that is our vision, that is our goal, and that is our commitment.
For more information on Into the Deep, go to intothedeepmadison.org