As our priests continue to unpack in their new homes and begin embracing new faith communities, and our people adjust to new leadership and new Mass times, I am certainly aware of the enormity of these changes as we launch Into the Deep.
I am deeply grateful to everyone who has helped us reach such a strategic point of opportunity.
This restructuring of the entire diocese is arguably the most significant change in our 77-year history!
Your support, prayer, suggestions, excitement, and even the fears and criticisms offered by some, are all expressions of your love for the Lord and the mission of the Church.
Many thanks to our priests, lay staff, deacons and Religious, diocesan leaders, and lay faithful who have worked very hard, both in realizing Go Make Disciples and Into the Deep.
I offer particular gratitude to Fr. Tait Schroeder, who is overseeing the implementation of this arduous process of strategic change.
Moving along in the process
This first year of Into the Deep is a time of assessment and discernment as our parish administrators and their leadership teams begin to envision how all the parishes of the pastorate will eventually merge together into a new parish sometime next year.
This unification is a daunting task, bringing together pastoral and finance councils, parish staffs, organizations such as St. Vincent de Paul conferences and Knights of Columbus councils; bulletins, websites, and other communications; catechesis and sacramental preparation; administrative and financial structures; schools, events; activities; and the list goes on.
While this process will be gradual in some ways, certain specific decision points along the way will also need determined outcomes.
In monthly meetings now for almost a year, a special two-day convocation this month of July, and both last year’s and this year’s priest assembly in September, our priests have been offering input, asking important questions, sharing concerns about our strategic planning, and are now implementing the Into the Deep guidelines.
This ambitious endeavor requires many skills of leadership, communication, team building, creativity, and listening.
Patrick Lencioni, the founder of The Table Group, a renowned author and expert on team management, and a respected voice in the Church for effective and practical mission success, is helping us to actuate our strategic plan.
In all of this change, we will need deep and constant prayer, a profound reliance on the Holy Spirit, patience with the process and each other, a steady courage to move ahead, a gracious flexibility, and a sturdy hope that the Lord is leading us into both a deeper relationship with Himself and a firmer pastoral foundation, upon which our diocese will flourish for decades to come.
We want to subvert and transform those disturbing statistics which we shared with everyone last year: Steep declines in the numbers of our people who attend Mass, have their children Baptized and catechized, get married in the Church, and are involved in their parishes.
All of this structural transformation will more fruitfully help the mission we received from Jesus Christ to flourish: Go make disciples of all nations; Baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and preach the Gospel to every creature.
With our priests working in teams, staffs joining together to be more creative and effective, uniting our financial and material resources, and eliminating unnecessary administration and duplication, we will truly be moving as the local Church from maintenance to mission, equipped and ready to advance the cause of Christ well into this 21st century.
Trusting in God
In the book of Exodus, in their sojourn to the Promised Land, some of the Israelites wanted to return to Egypt, where, even though they were slaves, they at least had food, security, and a home.
This vast and unknown freedom under the desert sky had no road signs, no map, and no material security.
The Jewish people had to rely on the promise that the Lord would always be with them and radically trust in that presence and protection.
We, too, may be tempted to want to go back to the comfort and security of the familiar and the certain.
This journey toward a transformed Church and renewed structures will have bumps and difficulties along the way, but I am absolutely convinced that this great task upon which we have embarked is of the Holy Spirit.
The Lord is leading us forward in a bold way to be transformed in Jesus Christ and to live the power of His Truth as we never have before.
Can I count on you to support your priests and leaders, to get involved in the life and work of your pastorate, to evangelize those around you by word and deed, to fall more deeply in love with the Lord, especially in the Eucharist?
I know I can because I have seen the goodness, faith, and charity of our diocese.
Jesus has promised to be with us until the end of the age.
Love never fails.