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About The Georgia bulletin (Atlanta) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (April 23, 1987)
Supplement to The Georgia Bulletin, April 23, 1987 □ Faith Toda A supplement to Cathoiic newspapers published by NATIONAL CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE 1312 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005. with grant assistance from ^ The Catholic Church EXTENSION Society 35 East Wacker Dr., Chicago, Illinois 60601 What will parishes in the year 2010 and beyond "look like"? While one sometimes hears dire predictions about the future, it isn't likely that parishes then won't even resemble parishes today, writes Katharine Bird. But there will be changes in parishes of the future — some that can be predicted based on current population, family and ministry trends, as well as some that will arise to meet important needs not even anticipated today. By Katharine Bird NC News Service W ill parishes in the year 2010 cooperate more closely, joining forces to offer youth ministry, adult education or to prepare children for the sacraments? If present trends offer a clue, that sort of cooperation may be standard 23 years from now. What else might parishes of the future “look like”? •Senior citizens will represent a greater percentage of the people and play a larger role in parishes. •In a society more acutely aware of diminishing natural resources, homilists may concen trate more on the responsibility church members have to care for God’s creation. •In a world grown smaller through increasingly rapid travel and telecommunications, parishioners will have a much greater sense of themselves as world citizens. •Parish ministers can expect to be even more challenged by the changing realities of family life — for example, the ecumenical challenge posed by more families in which only one spouse is Catholic. □ □ □ One important trend for future parishes will be “a change in ministerial patterns,” said Father Lawrence Mick, pastor of St. Patrick’s Church in Glynnwood, Ohio. Father Mick came to his assign ment four years ago knowing he would be the last resident pastor at the tiny rural parish of 82 families. When he leaves, one priest will fulfill sacramental duties at St. Patrick’s and another small parish 12 miles away. To prepare for that day, St. Patrick’s hired an administrative assistant to serve as “coordinator of activities” when Father Mick leaves. Her 30-hour week will in clude administrative duties along with scheduling lectures and coor dinating adult education programs. Another larger Ohio parish plans to approach life without a resident priest by hiring a parish administrator with a master’s degree in theology and experience in parish management, Father Mick said. This person will take over many roles served by a pastor, though not his sacramental duties. “More and more people today are learning that the activities of the parish are their responsibili ty,” a second trend that will in fluence future parishes, said Father Mick. When he moved to St. Patrick’s, there were no lay eucharistic ministers, not much by way of music and a parish council which had met once. Since then there has been “quite a shift in parishioners’ attitudes,” Father Mick said. Today many parishioners are involved in parish ministries. The parish council meets regularly and takes respon sibility for planning and keeping the parish alive. “A lot of my work is to con vince parishioners they don’t need a master’s degree to take respon sibility for parish work,” Father Mick said. He told how some parishioners approached him about setting up a choir. “I said I would support it” but they had to do the organizing. It took almost a year before a parishioner took on this respon sibility. Today a small choir sings beautifully at parish liturgies. Each small success facilitates the next, Father Mick believes, since building one person’s confidence seems to help others as well. Last Christmas, he recalled, the choir was unable to sing both at Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day. So a 25-year-old guitarist, with a little urging, agreed to see what she could do with some parish teens, including trumpet and clarinet players. Three weeks later, the group provided a “stunning and beautiful” Christmas Eve program. St. Patrick’s is also grappling with a new evangelization project — reaching out to unchurched people and to Catholics alienated from their church. Part of the parish’s interest in evangelization comes from its in volvement in an 18-month diocesan project that requires parishes to come up with a feasi ble way to deal with the expected priesthood shortage. The plan is required to be “fiscally solvent and ministerially complete.” At St. Patrick’s, considering what it means to be “ministerially complete” pointed to the need for evangelization. □ □ □ Sometimes dire predictions of the future are heard. One could get the impression that the church then won’t look anything like the church now. That surely won’t be the case. But recent experience — for ex ample, the church’s response to AIDS victims and their families — shows how quickly the church can develop new ministries to meet important needs of the day. Parishes in the year 2010, just as parishes today, will wrestle with questions like how best to serve teen-agers. Yet, to the ex tent that homelife, education and careers are different, some of the answers will be different too. (Ms. Bird is associate editor of Faith Today.)
