Under the Fir Tree

2 Corinthians 12:7-9 St. Paul asked for something to be taken away. Whatever the thorn was, he wanted relief. He prayed for change. Instead, Christ gave him a sentence. “My grace is sufficient for you.” Not: I’ll remove it. Not: You’ll understand it. Not even: This will turn out the way you hope. Only this: My grace is enough. There’s something difficult about that answer because we’d rather have evidence. We like things we can count. Progress. Results. A repaired relationship. A prayer answered in the form we recognize as an answer. A ministry growing. A child coming home. A temptation disappearing. A wound finally closing. We want to know the thing is working. And beneath a great deal of Christian obedience there can hide a quiet bargain with God: I’ll be faithful, Lord, but eventually I need you to show me that all this faithfulness is accomplishing something. So we pray, and then we look. We forgive, and watch to see whether the other person changes. We sacrifice, and wait for grat...

There’s a comforting idea that most of us carry around, especially those of us who like arguments. If people only knew. If they could see the evidence. If the facts were undeniable. If God would tear open the sky for five minutes, settle the matter, and then let everybody get on with things. Surely then we’d believe. Bertrand Russell once imagined the question being put to him from the other side of death: Why hadn’t he believed? His reported answer was essentially a complaint to God: Why didn’t you give me better evidence? It’s a formidable question, and not a foolish one. If God wants to be known, why remain hidden enough to be doubted? Laurence Cosse’s A Corner of the Veil doesn’t so much answer Russell as disturb the assumption beneath the question. What if better evidence came? What if God’s existence ceased to be a matter of probability or argument? What if the veil were pulled aside just far enough that disbelief became intellectually impossible? Would we actually become differ...

Twenty-seven posts. That's what the Parish Examen Series turned into. It started as a series of reflections on a process the Archdiocese of Portland asked its parishes to undertake. It became something closer to a field guide. The series was a labor of love. But it was a labor. What I'm thinking about returning to, at least for a while, is the kind of writing that begins with something small and sees where it goes. The series tried to be useful. This blog, at its best, tries to be something else. A still point. That's what the tagline has always said, and it's where I'm glad to return.

A (Final) Continuation # # # Twenty-six disciplines. Five movements. One series. Spiritual life, Sunday Mass, sacraments. Leadership, decision making, communication. Vision and mission alignment, evangelizing outreach, connection and assimilation, shepherding, belonging structures, discipleship, catechesis, volunteer development, vocations. Service ministries, community relations, mission partnerships. Financial development, financial management, facilities. That's a lot of territory. This post doesn't summarize it. It steps back to ask what the whole series has been trying to do, and what a parish should actually do with it. The answer connects directly to where the series began. The Examen wasn't a report card. It was a mirror. This series has been trying to hold that mirror steady across the full range of parish life, discipline by discipline, honestly enough to be useful and pastorally enough to be received. This final post asks what a parish does when it has looked hon...

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked whether the parish handles what has been given with integrity and transparency. This one asks about the physical environment those gifts have built and sustained. Facilities is the final discipline in this series, and its placement at the end isn't an accident. Buildings, campuses, and physical spaces don't generate mission. They serve it, or they hinder it, or they consume it. A parish whose facilities are poorly maintained, poorly utilized, or poorly aligned with its actual mission isn't managing an operational problem. It's allowing a physical reality to undermine a pastoral one, and paying for that undermining with resources the mission needs elsewhere. The Examen surfaced facilities concerns more consistently than almost any other operational area across the archdiocese. Deferred maintenance, aging infrastructure, underutilized spaces, and campuses built for a parish that no longer exists in its current form: these aren...

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked about the theology and culture of giving: whether the parish is forming its people in generosity as a spiritual practice rather than managing an annual appeal. This one asks what happens after the gifts arrive. Financial management is the discipline of handling what has been given with integrity, transparency, and accountability. It's the operational foundation beneath the stewardship culture the previous post described. A parish that forms its people in generous giving and then manages those gifts carelessly has broken faith with its own formation. It has asked people to trust the mission with their treasure and then failed to honor that trust with the systems the treasure deserves. The framing is simple and worth holding: all of the parish's income and financial assets are handled with integrity and used appropriately for the advancement of the Kingdom. Simple standard. Meeting it requires deliberate systems, clear oversight, and ...

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked whether the parish understands itself as sent, with a missionary identity that extends beyond its own campus and its own membership. This post begins the fifth and final movement of the Examen's structure. Stewardship. And it begins with the dimension of stewardship that most parish leaders find most uncomfortable to discuss and most consequential to neglect. Money. The discomfort is worth naming at the outset, because it shapes everything that follows. Most parish leaders would rather talk about almost anything else. Evangelization, formation, leadership, facilities: all of these feel more directly connected to the mission than talking about the collection. But the parish that never talks about money honestly, that treats the offertory as an obligation to be mentioned and a budget to be managed, has already made a theological mistake before the conversation begins. Stewardship isn't a fundraising strategy. It's a dimension of di...