Is your vision of who you are the same vision your friends
have of you?
Are you as happy as you can be?
What kind of cabbage are you most like?
So, I fall for those tests that used to be in magazines that
are now mostly on-line in which you answer a few questions and they tell you
what character you are most like from the movie “Princess Bride” or what career
choice would be best for you.
I fell into taking one from the National Leadership
Roundtable on Church Management which is a tool to help determine how healthy
your parish is. The answers were not
quick and easy however and I think this may be a project I give to Parish
Pastoral Council to tackle.
There was a presentation by the service director of the Roundtable,
Mr. Jim Lundholm-Eades at the last First Friday Club of Akron. They have past talks on line on their website
HERE and this is one I would recommend though I don't think it has made it to the site yet. Part
of the talk was discerning how healthy a parish is. A healthy parish is like a healthy marriage;
when the couple’s relationship is healthy, their love then spills out to
others. When a parish is healthy,
instead of being insular its ministry begins to spill out to the
community. It is like the love of
God. One of the explanations of creation
is that it is an overflow of the love within the Trinity.
There are smart parishes.
These parishes have a vision and a plan for the future. They understand that they can no longer just
simply open their doors and people will walk in. There must be a presence in the community
(which in business they call marketing.)
They are financially solvent and/or have a realistic plan to sustain
themselves. And they are technologically
savvy.
There are healthy parishes.
In a healthy parish there are minimal politics (there are always
politics, it is a matter of degree), minimum confusion, high moral, high productivity,
and low turnover.
How out going, how smart, and how healthy is your parish? If you are in the mood,
maybe take a look at the questionnaires that the Roundtable provides that
begins the conversation HERE.
Poor Father Valencheck,
ReplyDeleteOne day, two priests died. An angel walked up to one priest and said, "Here is your harp." And the priest said, "Yea! I'm going to Heaven!" To the other priest, an angel walked up and said, "Here is your questionnaire." And the priest said, "Oh No, I'm going to Hell!"
Adam and Eve did not eat an apple, they filled out a questionnaire.
On the temple mount, Satan said to Jesus, " Fill out this questionnaire and all these Kingdoms will be yours."
There must be more to this questionnaire than meets the eye.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to tell from the questions what is meant by an "excellent" parish.
Are the questions tied to any research showing that an "excellent" parish meets or exceeds these standards?
Perhaps we need to look at our mission statement and see if any of the items on this questionnaire align with our mission.