Balancing Priorities is HARD
A story from the trenches of managing 7 different churches:
- Act #1 – Sacred Heart plans its Parish Picnic for June 01. They want the Pastor to be able to attend, so we switch my normal Assumption and Sacred Heart weekends, and we find a way to schedule Fr. Thumbi for the Assumption Spanish Mass that I normally have when I celebrate a weekend in Bellingham. All seems rosy.
- Act #2 – Fr. Thumbi gets reassigned to Seattle, something that is only officially announced with 8 weekends left before the move. It will take Fr. Thumbi 4 full weekends to say goodbye to all of our locations, he is gone for 2 of those weekends, and it takes us more than a week to plan. The staff scrambles to dodge various First Communions, Baptisms, weddings, and other Parish events in trying to get Fr. Thumbi to all of these locations. A plan is set. It seems fine.
- Act #3 – Earlier this week, we realize that Fr. Thumbi is scheduled to say the 12:30 pm Spanish Mass at Assumption (so that Fr. Moore can attend the Sacred Heart picnic) immediately after his last 10:30 am Mass in Ferndale, preventing Ferndale from having a send-off reception for their 8-year-Pastor. Being told of the conflict, Fr. Moore determines that it is more important for Ferndale to have their send-off, because of how deep the relationship with Fr. Thumbi is there, and so he agrees to say the Spanish Mass, causing him to miss the majority of the Sacred Heart picnic.
I have been hearing from a lot of people about how hard it is not to have opportunities to get to know their priests. I promise you, I hate it, too, more than you can know. Things were so much easier when I was just the Pastor of Assumption, I only had to worry about one church’s calendar, and I could easily show up to stuff. But I think the above example from this week shows just how hard this balancing act is. We want to do every good thing for every location but are forced by circumstances to only do some. Our staffs are not yet consolidated enough to calendar around each other, so these problems will persist for at least another year. Growing pains are, well, painful.
Archdiocesan Lawsuit
The bishops of Seattle, Yakima, and Spokane are suing Washington State to preserve our 1st Amendment right to free exercise of religion, specifically in the confessional. You will find more information about that in your different bulletins. For now, here is a Northwest Catholic article: https://nwcatholic.org/news/kate-mcentee-deweese/bishops-of-washington-sue-state-say-new-law-violates-the-constitution
Partners in the Gospel – Operational vs. Visionary
I have had a few conversations recently that are prompting me to provide a reminder about Partners in the Gospel.
From the parishioner perspective, Partners in the Gospel encompasses two huge chucks.
Chunk #1 is operational. This is just trying to get a bunch of previously uncombined churches to work together. It involves technology and calendars and financial models and staff reorganizations. Technically, NONE OF THIS is actually Partners in the Gospel. It is just the result of a bunch of churches trying to share the same Pastor. Lots of churches experienced this reality in the last 30 years (think of the Skagit Valley churches) when the Archdiocese was still “clustering” churches.
Chunk #2 is visionary. Unlike the clustering over the last few decades, Partners in the Gospel does not envision these churches perpetually maintaining separate identities. (Previously, there was an idea that, should we ever get more priests, we could split the churches up again. That number of priests is now obviously not realistic in most of our lifetimes.) Instead, the Partners process is trying to get previously separate entities to develop a shared vision and identity, through consultation, conversations in the Spirit, and coming up with a concrete plan.
I am finding many parishioners think that Partners is only Chunk #1, what they are currently experiencing, and are deeply disappointed because it has not involved the depth of listening and consultation that was promised. But that is not accurate at all. Most of what people have experienced to-date is short-term survival, which I need to carry out quickly in consultation with the staff. Everything I have done so far can be easily un-done if that is where Partners leads. The real Partners is going to go public in the next couple months, as we start to roll out listening sessions and consultative mechanisms to try to develop this long-term vision and plan.
tl;dr – hang in there. If Partners is a roller coaster, we are still on the click-click-clicking uphill before the high-speed ride.
(You can find a LOT more information about Partners, the process, and the timeline at the Archdiocesan website: https://archseattle.org/partners/)
Fr. Moore 