Excerpt: The “elephant in the room” has been obstructing my work with parishes for more than two years now.
Actually, it has been in the way for much longer, but we did our best to work around it until, by now, it is so big we can't ignore it anymore.
That elephant is parish growth. Ironically, the elephant has gotten bigger because our parishes have gotten smaller…
Priests find themselves working alone, overburdened, understaffed, under-funded, and sometimes saddled with responsibility for serving the territories of neighboring parishes that have closed. This is a recipe for disaster.
In my view, it is high time we acknowledge the elephant in our Church before it destroys too many good ideas that our future parishes need. It's time to tackle growth...
The era of effortless growth is behind us. We either establish a new strategy for growth, or we wither on the vine, branch by branch, as the elephant munches away.
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