Under the Fir Tree

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked whether the parish has the structures that allow people to be known, formed, and accompanied in community. This one asks what those structures are meant to produce. Small groups, pastoral care, belonging structures, welcome systems: all of it is in service of something. That something is discipleship . Not attendance. Not membership. Not even sacramental participation, as essential as that is. Discipleship is the ongoing, lifelong process of being formed into the likeness of Jesus Christ and learning to live as a co-worker in His Kingdom. A disciple isn’t merely someone who accepts the Christian vision or knows how to explain it. A disciple is a learner. An apprentice. Someone who’s being reshaped by Christ and learning to live out the consequences of belonging to Him. That last part is where many parish formation systems stop short. They help people know what Christians believe. They don’t always help them become the kind of people who can ...

A previous post asked how the parish cares for its people when they're struggling, drifting, or disappearing. This one asks how the parish builds the conditions that make that care possible at scale. A trained shepherding team is essential. But even a well-formed team of dedicated pastoral care ministers can't personally accompany every parishioner through every season of life. The parish needs a distributed structure for belonging, formation, and mutual care that reaches people the staff never will, that operates in the ordinary rhythms of people's lives rather than only in moments of crisis, and that multiplies the parish's capacity rather than concentrating it in the same few people who are already carrying too much. That structure is small groups. Here's the claim: small groups should not be treated as a secondary parish activity or an optional fellowship program. When they are well-led, well-formed, and connected to the parish's mission, they are one of the...

A Continuation # # # One of the easiest mistakes in parish renewal is to confuse faith formation with discipleship. It’s an understandable mistake. Formation matters. Catechesis matters. Sacramental preparation matters. OCIA matters. Teaching the faith clearly and faithfully matters. A parish that doesn’t hand on the faith with confidence is failing at something essential. But still, the classroom isn’t the path. The Christian life isn’t simply a movement from ignorance to information. It’s a movement from death to life, from estrangement to communion, from suspicion to trust, from curiosity to surrender, from attendance to discipleship, from discipleship to mission. That journey includes teaching, but it can’t be reduced to teaching. This matters because many parish renewal efforts quietly assume that the central problem is inadequate religious instruction. If only the curriculum were better. If only sacramental preparation were more consistent. If only catechists were better trained....

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked what the parish is for and whether its resources reflect that answer. This one asks the next question. Is the parish actually moving outward? A parish can have a clear mission statement, a unified leadership team, and a well-ordered calendar and still be entirely self-referential. Vision without outreach is aspiration without legs. The Examen pressed this question directly: to what extent is the parish proactive in bringing the Gospel beyond the parking lot? That phrase is worth sitting with. Beyond the parking lot. It names the boundary most parishes haven't crossed consistently, not because they don't care about the people outside, but because caring and going are different things, and most parishes have developed a culture that waits rather than moves. # # # The necessary outcome here is specific: disciples are regularly engaging with and witnessing to others in such a way that it results in consistent conversion growth and engage...

The Great Commission Matthew 28:19 Jesus’ final words in Matthew 28:19 are striking because they’re so earthy: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” That command assumes roads. Conversations. Misunderstanding. Patience. It assumes tears and courage and ordinary Tuesdays. It assumes a world where people are still deciding who they’ll trust, who they’ll follow, and what story they’ll build their life on. And that’s exactly why it can't be done in heaven. In heaven, faith will be sight. No one will need to be invited to follow Jesus because everyone will already know him as he is. There will be no nations to reach in the sense Jesus means here. No rebellion left. No gospel to explain through trembling words. No neighbor still living under the weight of shame, confusion, or self-rule. The Great Commission belongs to this age because this age is still full of people who are loved by God and not yet awake to that love. That gives a strange dignity to our life now. A lot of us...

Evangelization isn’t an “extra.” It’s the Church breathing. If we stop, we don’t become neutral—we become stale. Define it fast, Father: evangelization is love that refuses to hoard the Gospel. Not a sales pitch. Not a personality type. Not “marketing.” It’s a disciple saying, in word and life: Jesus is real, and He changes people. Your people don’t hate the Great Commission. They fear the caricature of it. They picture awkward scripts, pushy strangers, political fights in the vestibule. So don’t pitch the caricature. Kill it. Two pitches never work—drop them: 1) Guilt. “You should be doing more.” Guilt can move bodies. It won’t move hearts. It makes parish employees, not witnesses. 2) Hype. “We’re launching something huge.” Hype fills a calendar. It doesn’t fill a soul. It’s cotton candy with a logo. The convincing path is simpler and sharper: make evangelization look like ordinary Christianity. Start Where They Actually Live Most Catholics aren’t asking, “How do I convert the natio...

I have a confession: I like Tool. The part I don't quite understand—at times—is why. It'd be just like God, wouldn’t it, to let some startingly catholic (small c) music come thundering not from an organ loft, but from four men on a dark stage, bathed in bruised light, guitars snarling like guard dogs at the edge of the cemetery, or the sanctuary. We go hunting for “Christian music”—I have—but it smells like disinfectant and youth conferences, while a truly catholic sound—a sound that dares to hold the whole of man, his blasphemies and his groans—shakes the walls of clubs and arenas under the name Tool. Sometimes I wonder whether the Christians of this age recognize their best psalmists; for many, they’re just too busy to hear the penitential rite in a polyrhythm. Catholic doesn’t mean “nice.” It means whole. It means a Church that insists on gathering every fragment of creation into the chalice: ecstasy and boredom, tenderness and brutality, the choir boy and the drunk in the b...

More thoughts on the profound transition the church in the United States is undergoing  and why the central strategic question of evangelism in a post-Christendom context is not merely, "What should we say?" but "Through what kind of community will the Gospel travel?" And for those who prefer a storytelling method for learning... # # # The Honeycomb Parish Chapter 1 – The Pivot at Saint Gabriel’s On a flat November morning, Father Jonas unlocked the big red doors of Saint Gabriel’s and heard the echo answer him. An hour before Mass, the building felt larger than it had a right to feel. His shoes clicked on stone; the sound went up and vanished into the vault. The banners from the last capital campaign still drooped from the rafters: "Growing Together for Tomorrow." The thermometer poster in the vestibule stalled at 61%—like a promise no one had had the heart to tear down. He flipped on the sanctuary lights. The stained glass woke up on cue: saints glowing ...