Under the Fir Tree

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked who is leading the parish and whether they're formed well enough to carry the mission. This one asks something more specific. When those leaders need to act, how do decisions actually get made? Who has authority to decide what? How are those decisions explained and owned? And what happens to a parish when none of that is clear? Decision making sounds like a governance topic. It is. But in a parish it's also a pastoral one. Unclear decision making doesn't just produce inefficiency. It produces mistrust, disengagement, and a quiet erosion of the confidence people have in their leaders. And that erosion, once it sets in, is slow to reverse. # # # The necessary outcome for this discipline is worth sitting with: the parish experiences confidence in every decision, understanding why it's made, how it's executed, and who has the authority to carry it out. The word confidence is doing real work in that sentence. Not agreement. Pe...

A Continuation # # # The last three posts stayed close to the altar. Spiritual life, Sunday Mass, the sacraments: each one asking, from a different angle, whether the parish is genuinely rooted in encounter with Jesus Christ. Whether the liturgy is prayed. Whether the sacraments are forming people or merely marking them. This post steps back to ask what makes all of that sustainable. Not a program question. A people question. Specifically: who is leading the parish, how are they formed, and are there enough of them to carry the mission without burning out the few who always show up? The Examen placed its leadership questions immediately after its worship questions for a reason. Beautiful liturgy and a broken leadership culture can coexist for a while. They can't coexist indefinitely. Eventually the strain shows up in the worship, in the pastoral care, in the pastor himself. # # # The necessary outcome for this discipline is precise: a growing group of spirit-filled, wise people are...

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked about Sunday Mass. This one asks about the wider sacramental life of the parish, and a pattern that runs through almost every finding the Examen surfaced. Sunday Mass is the central sacramental act of parish life. But the sacramental life of a parish is wider than Sunday. Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Confession, Marriage, Anointing, Holy Orders: these aren't separate religious services the parish happens to provide. They're the ongoing encounters with Christ through which the Church does its most essential work. The question the Examen pressed isn't whether the parish administers them. It's whether it administers them in a way that actually forms people and draws them deeper into belonging, faith, and mission. Those are different questions. Most parishes answer the first confidently. The second is harder. # # # The trap worth naming at the outset is this: in ordinary parish experience, sacraments tend to get treated as m...

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked about the root. This one asks about the most visible expression of it. Spiritual life is the parish's orientation toward God. Sunday Mass is where that orientation becomes concrete, public, and observable. It's the one moment in parish life when the whole body gathers, when the parish's actual relationship with God is on display, when the newcomer forms a first impression and the longtime parishioner is either fed or quietly confirmed in their drift. Everything the previous post described, the Eucharist as center, liturgy that's prayed, confidence in the Gospel's power to transform lives, either shows up here or it doesn't. # # # It helps to start with what Sunday Mass is actually for. Not a service to be delivered. Not a box to check. Not even primarily a community gathering, though real community forms here. Sunday Mass is the parish's central act of worship, the place where heaven and earth meet in the most co...

A Continuation # # # The previous post looked at the structure of the 17 questions. Now we begin where the Examen begins: spiritual life. Spiritual life sounds like one item on a list. It isn't. It's the condition that makes everything else on the list possible or impossible. A parish can have a functioning Finance Council, a trained hospitality team, a cleaned-up facilities plan, and a broken spiritual life. What it produces then is well-organized drift. This is why the Examen placed its first questions here. Not about programs. Not about budgets. Not even about Mass attendance, though that matters. The first questions asked whether the parish reflects genuine confidence in the Gospel, whether it provides a life-giving encounter with Jesus Christ, and whether it actually believes that faithful proclamation transforms lives. Those are not administrative questions. They're the questions underneath every other question in the Examen. # # # It helps to say plainly what spiritu...

A Continuation # # # The previous posts established something simple: a mirror, not a report card. And a discipline, not just a program. But before walking through the disciplines one by one, it helps to look at what the Examen actually asked. Most people who know the Parish Examen happened have a general sense of what it covered. Fewer have read the 17 questions carefully. That's worth fixing. Not because the questions are remarkable on their own, but because the way they're organized reveals something important about how the archdiocese understands what a parish is for. The questions weren't random. They follow a deliberate sequence. And that sequence is itself a kind of theology. # # # The 17 questions move through four areas. The first three questions ask about worship, sacramental life, and confidence in the Gospel. Does the parish celebrate the Eucharist as the center of everything? Is the liturgy faithful and prayerful? Is Confession available and encouraged? Is ther...