A couple of days ago, I wondered what it would be like if parishes thought of themselves as customer service centers. Today, a post by Andrew McAfee (Gov 2.0 vs. the Beast of Bureaucracy) made me wonder what would happen if we thought of parishes as bureaucracies. I think the analogy probably works better with dioceses.

But there is at least one way that a parish is like a bureaucracy. It is resistant to change. McAfee quotes the economist John Kenneth Galbraith: “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

We teach the catechumens that the core vision of a Catholic community is enfleshed at the Easter Vigil every year and in the Sunday liturgy every week when we celebrate death and resurrection. And yet, for all our talk of rebirth and new life, a parish is usually amazingly stable. Not much changes from year to year. I’m not suggesting parishes change simply for the sake of change. But are we operating the way we do because we’ve prayerfully discerned this is the best way to function as a parish? Or rather, because we’ve always done it this way?

What is a long-held tradition, practice, or institution in your parish that might benefit from a change?