A map to the future of the parish
This is a somewhat lengthy review. The main points are these: 1. We live in a confusing time. 2. Our traditional methods of pastoral care are becoming less and less effective. 3. We need to discover new ways of being church in the world. 4. Figuring all this out is difficult and even frightening, but it is what we, the People of God, are being called to do, right here, right now.
Where are the maps?
Do you remember when gas stations gave out free maps? You didn’t even have to buy gas to get one. I could take off on a road trip, confident that if I got into unfamiliar territory, I could just pull into a Texaco, get a map, and then plot my course. Then, we entered the dark middle time. The time after stations stopped giving out maps and before Mapquest was invented to show us the way. In that dark age, it was very easy to get lost.
In Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition, Alan J. Roxburgh says our culture—and our churches—are in a confusing, mapless time. We all have internal maps that have gotten us this far, but the maps no longer seem to be working. The old familiar landmarks are either missing or are no longer helpful.
What is so distressing for pastoral leaders is, many of our parishioners think they can come to church and still pick up their free maps. They don’t realize there are no more maps and the spiritual equivalent of Mapquest has not yet been created. Roxburgh says “leaders feel pressure to provide clear maps that give clear direction” (24). Pastoral leaders know the old maps are not working, but the hunger for solutions is so great that, “Even as we lose our sense of where these old maps came from, we cling to them more tightly” (25).
We are no longer in control
Where we have come from, says Roxburgh, is a tradition in which we saw the world as a collection of manageable objects. The Enlightenment and Newtonian science told us that with the right data, the right formula, the right information, the right program—we could predict and determine any outcome we desired. Everything was in our control. But we missed what is really going on. Instead of a world of manageable objects, we live in “a world of interconnections and dynamic networks always interacting in so many different and diverse ways that we can ever really be in control” (28). This shift, from a world of objects to a world of dynamic networks, shakes us to our core. All our previous assumptions about how things work is challenged to such an extent that we have become disoriented, confused, and anxious for our future.
Roxburgh connects this loss of objective reality with the way we view parish life. He says pastoral leaders cling to the conviction that we can build healthy parishes using standard indicators of church life, such as worship, stewardship, evangelization, preaching, spirituality, and so on. But, he asks, what if these things are not the problem? What if no matter how much we improve our liturgy or our evangelization efforts, or whatever, our churches do not get healthier? What if we are missing the point?
What if our way of assessing the health of our churches comes from a modernity that has made us believe that there is a “right” way of being the church (and by extension, “right” indicators for measuring our progress), but in fact we are discovering in this time of massive transformation that the world actually doesn’t operate according to such “objective” indictors? If this is the case, then analyzing these established indicators is actually a dangerous and misguided approach to being the church in a new space. What if the most helpful indicators of how to be church are to be found in radically different places? (31)
How can we be church in this new world?
These radically different places are “the thousands and millions of small supposedly insignificant interactions we can never see or incorporate into our data and plans” (63). And there is no “map” to find those places. We have to become map-makers—explorers setting out into uncharted territory, discovering our way as we go.
In the second half of his book, Roxburgh presents four steps for making that exploration and discovering the radically different places that will help us be true leaders.
1. See the change
First, he says, we have to recognize what has changed. Roxburgh is Canadian, and he points out that Canada has become a postmodern and post-Christian country a lot faster than most areas of the United States. But the shift is happening here, too, even if it is not yet as starkly obvious as up north. And the shift is this. Traditional churches are coming to be seen as no longer relevant to the everyday lives of ordinary people. Therefore, the more we focus on the internal workings of parish life, the less we will be able to connect authentically with the actual lives of real people in real neighborhoods. And, in recognizing this change, we have to admit that there is really not much cultural or spiritual difference between the people who have left the church completely and those who may still be in our pews. The forces of change are not just “out there.”
2. Re-create a core identity—through interaction with Scripture
The second step in exploring the uncharted world in which we live is to find a way to re-create among the people who are still in the pews a core identity. And that happens, says the author, by creating “an environment in which the ordinary people of God are invited to reexperience the biblical narratives in the conviction and confidence that they can hear and discern the ways of God among them as a people” (117). In other words, says Roxburgh, it is not just the pastoral leaders who need to become map-makers. “The new maps come from among the people” (137). The pastoral leaders cannot function in their traditional role of bringing mission statements and strategic plans to the parish members. Rather, they have to spend time building relationships, developing trust, and engaging in conversations in which they do a lot more listening than speaking. And as they listen, slowly and gently, the pastoral leaders begin to point out the connections between the stories the parishioners are telling and the biblical narratives.
3. Establish a parallel culture
Step three is to build on this rediscovery of the intersection of Scripture and our everyday lives. The gospel call is a call to a life that is in but not of the world. Roxburgh says we have to begin building a new, parallel culture by engaging in new habits and practices (or what Catholics might call disciplines). These practices include a modified “office,” in which we stop several times a day to simply notice God acting in our lives. Roxburgh calls this a “subversive activity” in the midst of a world that values treadmill-like dedication to the time clock. Another practice is radical hospitality, which means to profoundly welcome the strangers in our lives into authentic relationship. Once we have begun to practice the first two disciplines, a third becomes possible—receiving the poor. The author challenges us to intentionally seek out friendships with people who are outside our own economic sphere—which goes way beyond volunteering at the soup kitchen once a month. And the final practice to help us build a culture in, but not of the world is to keep on learning throughout our lives.
4. Make new maps
Once these first three steps are in place, a parish is ready to take on the final step—actually making maps. That is, a parish will now decide what exactly it will do, as a local church, in the neighborhood in which it exists. Roxburgh’s entire book has been building up to this step, and it is too extensive to cover completely in this review. But the key is this. We live in a time of radical change and discontinuity. Such times look dark and ominous—as though God may have abandoned us. Yet it is exactly in this time, in this moment, that God is calling us as a people. God is calling us to be a light in these dark days, to be the spark for a new future. The leaders among us cannot do it alone, and the rest of us cannot do it without leadership. St. Paul’s analogy of the Body was never more apt. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Cor. 12:21). All of God’s people must step forward, together, into this uncharted and dangerous world, relying on our faith to guide us.
The new maps for missional life emerge from the interconnections and interrelationships that form between members of a congregation. They emerge from among the diffuse, noncentralized nodes of energy and creativity continually swirling among people. (179)
We live in a time when it is very easy to get lost. Our old maps can no longer show us the way. But even so, we are the people God has called to chart the future. Now is the acceptable time.
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Nick,
Thank you for sharing. I would be very interested in the implications of what this author is talking about for the Church. What “new disciplines” as Catholics might be considered? You shared that “Traditional churches are coming to be seen as no longer relevant to the everyday lives of ordinary people. Therefore, the more we focus on the internal workings of parish life, the less we will be able to connect authentically with the actual lives of real people in real neighborhoods. And, in recognizing this change, we have to admit that there is really not much cultural or spiritual difference between the people who have left the church completely and those who may still be in our pews. The forces of change are not just “out there.””
What does this mean for the life of the Catholic Parish? How do we “guard the deposit which has been entrusted to us” (1 Tim. 6:20) while making it relevant to those in the Third Millennium? Also, what does it mean to make a “new map” in a Catholic parish, in the Church?
I would greatly appreciate any insights you have regarding missional map-making.
Hi William. I think the overall point Roxburgh is making is that we don’t yet know what it means to make new maps. It is going to be a learning experience for all of us. The first step, however, is to stop relying on old maps. We have to be willing to try new things, some of which may seem counter-intuitive.
So, perhaps we have to re-invent ways of safeguarding the deposit of faith. In a previous era, we could simply say “as the church has always taught.” Now, we have to find a way to make church teaching more authentic for the lives of those we are ministering to. The faith is still the same. But the presentation of the faith will have to change.
For me, the challenge is to first of all listen more. So many of the people who need to hear the gospel are so different from me. Until I better understand how they are different and what is important to them right now, I will not be able to tell them why the gospel is important to me and how it can be important to them.
Blessings on all you are doing to spread the word.