Today's Parish | Ideas and Inspiration for Pastors, Parish Ministers, and Leaders

By Msgr. Vincent Rush

A parish is a system. And because it is a system, it produces. What it produces is exactly what it is (perhaps unwittingly) designed to produce. One thing systems always produce is boundaries. I don’t mean their geographic borders but their implicit definition of what’s “in” and what’s “out,” which activities and environments are their own and which are not. When people come to the parish, whether as a regular part of their Sunday routine or with apprehension after years away, they cross a boundary: they move from “outside” to “inside.” The parish system can make that transition easy and inviting or awkward and unwelcoming.

Create boundaries that welcome people
You can explore helpful and discouraging boundaries by calling to mind your experiences with “getting into” other systems.

• What is it like when you call a help center on the phone?
• What greets you when you go to the theater?
• What happens when you enter a supermarket or an office building?

The way in which we welcome people produces a boundary. So parish ministers need to make good choices in order to create an inviting boundary as opposed to a forbidding one. For instance, many well-meaning parish leaders assign greeters to welcome people as they come to church on Sunday. The systems perspective teaches that it is a mistake to think of this as a sufficient “welcome.” Think of all the ways boundaries are produced before the visitor ever gets to the church door.

• Visitors are usually met first by the parish’s reputation—what they hear through the neighborhood grapevine before they ever approach the property.
• They are almost certainly met by parishioners; how parish mem- bers talk about their experience of the parish either opens or closes doors. So parishes need to teach members the importance of inviting others along and, equally important, need to give parishioners skills for inviting effectively.
• Welcome—or lack of it—is also communicated by parish outreach materials: the parish Web site, announcements in the local media, and the bulletin.
• When people do approach in person, they are met first by the sacrament of how a parish thinks about itself: the appearance and layout of the physical plant. Things like landscaping, parking, signage, and lighting speak. They can say, “Even if it’s your first time here, we’ll make it easy for you!” Or they might say, “Unless you already know your way around, stay away!” On a quiet day drive up to the parish where you serve, imagining yourself as a stranger coming for the first time: What do you see? How easy is it to find the driveway, discover a place to park, locate the right door to the building, go to the proper office, and finally unearth the person who has the information you seek?

Even the paint speaks
The best cheap publicity I ever got as a pastor was in a parish that you could enter from three of the adjoining streets and from the fourth side as well. I had simple signs put at the sidewalk end of each walkway and by each door telling people what they’d find inside. I also had the public-access doors painted in a color that contrasted with the buildings and the maintenance-only doors painted to match their surrounding walls. Even people who went to Mass every day loved it. Previously, when they had to do something out of their ordinary routine, they were as confused as a first-time visitor about where to go. Because of staff members’ inside knowledge we usually don’t even see the ways in which the parish’s necessary boundaries become walls instead of bridges. So remember: Anything that calls on inside knowledge blocks welcome.

Take a walk through your parish system, physically and imaginatively: What do people have to do to register? How much of that is for the convenience of the office staff instead of for the benefit of the new member? How useful is the bulletin (really)? What information or help do people most frequently look for, and how easy is it for them to find it?

Also, research the impact your attempts at welcome are having on people. Ask them what helps and what confuses, what they like and don’t. There are good reasons parishes have boundaries. At their best, they help people to feel safe and cared for inside; but unless we attend carefully to them, boundaries can say “stay away” instead of “welcome.” TP

Telephone Tips

• Whenever possible, have a live person answer the phone, not a voicemail system.
• Be sure that person can direct calls accurately.
• Be even more sure that person likes people and communicates that liking.
• Teach receptionists to be aware of the parish’s mission and core values so they communicate what’s most essential.
• If your phone system allows it, have prerecorded messages about times of Mass, directions, and other frequent questions so that at high-volume times a receptionist can connect calls to them.
• Teach receptionists about the limits of their expertise; let them know what questions they can properly answer, which should be referred, and to whom to refer more complex inquiries. (Wrong information creates a terrible impression.)
• If a message is going to be left, let callers know how long it may be before someone gets back to them—and get back to them before your promised deadline.
• Train ministry staff and receptionists in listening skills so they can communicate to angry or upset callers that they’re being heard.

Keep the welcome going

• Ask people’s opinions regularly about issues in parish life and communicate back what you hear.
• Thank volunteers and staff regularly and, to the degree that you can, find out the particular styles of thanking that each likes best and use it with him or her.
• Don’t waste people’s time for the convenience of staff. Examine every process to see how it can be simplified from the parishioner’s point of view. Shift any necessary complexity out of parishioners’ experience and into the tasks of the parish office.
• Have meetings only when genuinely needed and consider people’s other commitments when scheduling meetings.
• Consider ways to help people to link names of other parishioners to their faces, for example, a regular “nametag Sunday” (on which everyone wears a name tag to Mass) or a parish directory.

*This article appeared in the September 2007 issue of Today’s Parish.

Msgr. Vincent Rush

Msgr. Vincent Rush is pastor of Our Lady of Grace Roman Catholic Church in West Babylon, New York. He was pastor of St. Hugh of Lincoln Roman Catholic Church in Huntington Station, New York, when he wrote this.