does your parish intrigue anyone?

Does your parish intrigue anyone?

Stop. Move your eyes about 3cm back up the page. Read those five words again.

Stop. Read those five words again. Think about them for 40 seconds before moving on.

It’s a serious question.

Does your parish intrigue anyone?

Every parish wants to grow, and when they say 'grow', they're usually talking about people.

• They want their parish ministries to be bursting with people. 
• They want the masses to be standing room only.
• They want the parking lot to be a mess.

So they make themselves warm and welcoming. They set up committees for hospitality. They do some service work in the community. They hold parish missions. They create learning opportunities surrounding the mass, and increase their adult formation classes.

That's a lot of hard work, and it's a lot of great work. And still, so many parishes would say, "yeah, we've done all that. And to be honest, we didn't see a lot of results. The same people came over and over again. The same people volunteered over and over again. And not much has changed."

If you want your Church to grow, you must go back and ask yourself the question at the top of this page.

Does your parish intrigue anyone?

New people are going to come to your parish for one of three reasons.

• You get new people because they move or some logistic in their life makes them need a new parish.

This happens all the time. Every year every parish is going to gain and few and lose a few to ‘life’. There is nothing to get excited about here.

• You get new people because they independently come to the conclusion that something is missing in their life and - while they aren’t sure what it is or where to find it - they figure they might as well check out local churches and see what they have to offer.

This is a crapshoot. Who knows which Church this person will reach out to? This person is searching, and maybe you will be lucky enough that they stumble upon you.

• You get new people because your parish does something that catches their attention, and they want to know more about it.
  

The only path to intentional parish growth is to intrigue people.

How do you do it? How can your parish intrigue people?

To answer that you have to understand a little bit about how intrigue works. 

One of the most powerful tools our brains use to help us understand the world around us are schemas. The world works a certain way, our brain figures out the patterns, and that understanding (called a schema) is filed away for future use. Schemas help us know what to expect from the world around us. We learn how to react, how to behave, and how to process everything that is happening. But what happens when something breaks one of our schemas? 

The person in front of us at the drive through pays for our coffee. 
Someone is incredibly rude or downright mean.
We experience a profound instance of ‘good luck’.
We experience a tragedy.

That’s just four, but really our schemas could be broken in a thousands ways. What if the traffic light was purple, blue, and hot pink? That would break a schema that is formed in our mind about traffic lights.

Parishes that intrigue people do it by breaking schemas. It’s how we grab attention and create curiosity. 

The people in your community have a schema built about your parish. What is it?

• I never hear from that place 
• That place has nothing to do with my life
• I don't need to pay any attention to that place
• They don't do anything for me

Figure out the schemas the people in your greater community have about your parish, then smash them.

Here are a few ways a parish can break schemas: 

• Create a coordinated effort amongst parishioners around the idea of random acts of kindness. Every parishioner goes out into a community for a few hours one Saturday, does a simple act of kindness, and leaves a business card with the parishes logo on one side, and a message like "Hope you having a fantastic day" on the other. 
• Send your parishioners out in groups of two to knock on doors of people in the neighborhood near your parish, saying that your parish wants to be good neighbors, and ask them how you can serve them and pray for them. 
• Do a Eucharistic procession through the streets of your town, conducted by your youth group. A public act of praise and worship of God by young people? Mind blowing. 
• Hold a free garage sale. Collect all the unwanted items from parishioners and offer them for free to other members of the community.

These are just a few ideas. Spend some time and you can come up with many of your own. Make sure they are way outside of the ‘normal’ that we experience in everyday life, and make sure they are visible by your community. If they also serve your community, that’s even better.

There was an incredible program in Milwaukee called OremusMKE that broke schemas.

The young adults in this group would go to a parish that was in the heart of downtown Milwaukee, usually situated amongst the bar district. From 9pm to midnight they would have music and adoration, and the doors of the church would be wide open. They had a team of people who would stand outside the doors and invite people who were on their way to the bar to come in and pray for world peace. They had confessions available in case someone wanted it, and plenty of people for passerbys to have a conversation with.

I promise you, the last thing someone expects when they are walking downtown at ten o’clock at night going to the bars is to be asked to pray for world peace. It broke schemas and it was incredibly intriguing.

If you want your parish to grow, start asking yourself who the parish is intriguing. 

Thanks for reading, and as always, reach out to me and let me know what you think. 

Dominick