Under the Fir Tree

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...

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked whether the parish is known and trusted in its immediate neighborhood. This one asks about the wider horizon. A parish genuinely embedded in its local community and genuinely formed in missionary discipleship will eventually bump up against a question its neighborhood can't fully answer: what is our responsibility to the mission of the Church beyond what we can see from the parking lot? Mission partnerships is the discipline that takes that question seriously. It asks whether the parish understands itself as a sent community, not merely a stationed one, with responsibilities that extend locally, regionally, and globally. Whether the parish's missionary imagination is as large as the mission it's been given. Whether the people gathered on Sunday understand themselves as part of a movement that is genuinely global and genuinely alive, or whether they understand themselves as members of a local religious organization with occasional...

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked whether the parish is making the love of Christ visible through organized service to people in need. This one asks a more basic question. Does the surrounding community know the parish exists? And does it experience the parish as a gift rather than as a background institution it occasionally notices from the highway? Service ministries reach the people who find their way to the parish's programs. This discipline asks about something prior: whether the parish is known, present, and trusted in the broader neighborhood it was placed to serve. Whether the community around the building has any real sense of the community inside it. Whether the parish's presence in its neighborhood is something the neighborhood actually feels. There is a diagnostic question worth carrying through the entire post: if the parish closed its doors tomorrow, what difference would it make to the community around it? Not to the parishioners. To the community. To ...

A Continuation # # # The previous post asked whether the parish is forming people deeply enough that some of them hear God calling them to give their whole lives. This post begins the fourth and final movement of the Examen's structure. The first movement asked about worship. The second asked about the structures that make worship sustainable. The third asked about the missionary discipleship that flows from worship into the world. This fourth movement asks about the outward expression of all three: whether the parish's love for God and formation of disciples is producing visible, concrete, costly care for the people around it. A parish that worships well, leads well, and forms disciples well, and serves no one, has missed something essential about the Gospel it's proclaiming. The works of mercy aren't the Church's charitable output. They're a constitutive dimension of her life. They aren't what the parish does after it has finished being the Church. They...