When you do your long-term planning, what staff or key-volunteer positions do you need to develop for the ongoing vitality of your parish? The job bank on the National Association of Lay Ministry website indicates that parishes are looking for liturgical musicians, youth and young adult ministers, stewardship/development directors, and catechetical directors.

The Center for Church Communication Job Board, a non-profit with Evangelical Protestant roots, lists openings that include media director, web designer, graphic designer, and videographer.

Is there a trend indicated here that Catholic parishes should pay more attention to? What would be the advantages and disadvantages of employing, say, a parish videographer instead of (or in addition to) a young adult minister in the next round of hiring?

When we think of parish leaders, we naturally think of the pastor. I asked Msgr. Vin Rush, pastor of Our Lady of Grace Roman Catholic Church in West Babylon, New York, to share his top ten leadership practices. It is a pretty compelling list!

1. Be a servant-leader; focus on the growth in holiness and discipleship of the parish and its members, not on yourself.
2. Remember that people’s trust in you is irreplaceable (and unrecoverable if you lose it); be forthright and transparent in your ministry.

3. Keep the big picture and your primary goals in mind, and set your schedule and commitments accordingly.
4. Make your preaching a priority; it’s a key way you lead and serve.
5. Expect conflict, and learn to manage it toward good outcomes.
6. Make your staff and key volunteers central to your own ministry: Affirm them and coach them (which includes giving regular feedback on their performance).
7. Listen to people, ask for advice; but be aware whether people are trying to help or are grinding their own axes.
8. Have clear rules about confidentiality of personal information, and also about transparency of parish processes and finances.
9. Gather a group of trusted advisors and rely on them. Get the best people (in terms of wisdom, credibility, and competence) for your pastoral and finance Councils.
10. Have a life and regular commitments outside your work. Don’t think that you’re irreplaceable or indispensible.

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Can you think of more? What are some additional ways pastors can practice leadership? Share your thoughts, because your insights are valuable.

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For more posts in the leadership series, click here.

For a long time, I’ve had an image stuck in my head about Sunday liturgy. From the looks of things, it seems many liturgical leaders—probably unconsciously—think of Sunday Mass as a kind of prayerful talk show. Much of what goes on seems to mimic the format best popularized by the Tonight Show.

I don’t mean that liturgical leaders are irreverent. Quite the opposite. I think they are trying very hard to engage the parish assembly in the action of the liturgy. What I question is the model they are using to foster participation.

Jay Leno and folks like him are masters at improvisation, humor, and—most of all—engaging the audience. We see these men every night on every network working the crowd and creating a high level of interest in seemingly mundane, boring topics. It’s only natural that we would try to imitate them.

A cure for boring liturgy?

The talk show, however, the wrong model. First of all, you have to be Jay or Conan or Dave to make boring things interesting. It is a rare talent, and most people cannot do it. And the premise is wrong. Of course, we, the parish leaders, don’t think Mass is boring. But we often concede that the parishioners think so. And with that premise, we try to spice things up a little.

I don’t believe parishioners think the story we are telling in the Mass is boring. But I think they often find the telling of the story to be boring. That makes me think the analogy we should have in mind for the liturgy is opera. The stories that underlie famous operas are compelling. But badly performed opera is an exercise in watching paint dry.

If you are the director of an opera and your goal is to make the opera compelling, what do you do? Do you ask the tenor to make a quip to the orchestra, wink at the audience, and chat with the soprano who has just published a tell-all about her time in the chorus? Of course not. You would, instead, find people who have the talent to carry off their role and then rehearse them until they had mastered the dramatic flow of the story. You would work at making the opera more operatic.

Operatic liturgy

An opera is an art form. It is a dramatic work that combines theater, dance, and music. The dialogue is mostly sung. It think that describes Sunday Mass pretty well. Or it ought to. We have lost the sense of the Mass as a sung event, but that is what it is intended to be. One key to engaging the assembly is, instead of mimicking the talk show, make the liturgy more operatic. Introduce more sung dialogue. Some of the parts of the Mass that are not usually sung—but could be—include:

• Greeting
• Penitential rite
• Opening Prayer
• Gospel
• Profession of faith
• Intercessions
• Prayer over the Gifts
• Eucharistic Prayer
• Lord’s Prayer
• Blessing and Dismissal

Of course, this will require work. It will require change. It will be uncomfortable at first. You’re going to have to rehearse more. Badly performed liturgy is like badly performed opera—excruciating. To avoid bad performance, you’re going to have to risk more. Talk shows are not art, and they require little risk. Opera—and good liturgy—is art and requires dying to ourselves for the sake of the art.

Build engagement

If your assembly is not used to this much singing, I wouldn’t suggest unveiling a complete operatic revision next Sunday. But you could begin to introduce some more sung elements and build gradually. Try, for example, singing the blessing and dismissal for six Sundays in a row. See if that doesn’t change your sense of the dramatic power of the liturgy. I guarantee the assembly will be more engaged.

Janet Baker, RSM, has a very simple solution for making parish meetings more productive: Be prepared.

“The answer may appear simplistic,” says Baker, “but it is essential. Persons attending any meeting need to know what they are meeting about.”

According to Baker, preparation means:

• Sending out an agenda ahead of time
• Providing a clear sense of expected outcomes
• Providing a way for everyone to contribute to the outcome
• Starting and ending on time

For more on productive meetings, see Baker’s chapter, “Parish Identity” in The Parish Management Handbook (Twenty-Third Publications).

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Disclosure: I am an editor with Bayard, Inc., the company that published this book. Regardless, I only recommend books that I have personally read and believe will be good for my readers.

Can children be leaders in the parish community? They can certainly begin to exhibit leadership practices. One of the most responsible positions parishes entrust children with is that of “acolyte.” If we are going to ask them to fill this leadership role in the community, we should ask them to excel at it. Here are some potential leadership practices they can step up to.

1. On Sunday, always act more than your age. Be an example to the entire worshiping assembly.
2. Open the hymn book or worship aid and sing.
3. Distractions happen. But try to keep them to a minimum. Pay attention, even when it is hard.
4. Read the Sunday readings on the day before you serve. That will help you pay attention better.

5. Pay attention to how you sit and stand. Don’t slouch. Fold your hands.
6. Every time you serve, find one way to help a younger server improve.
7. If you are a younger server, learn one new thing every time you serve. Ask an older server or the priest to show you how.
8. Dress up for your ministry. Lay out your clothes the night before so you won’t be late in the morning.
9. Don’t be a wallflower in the sacristy. Introduce yourself and shake hands with any adults you don’t know.
10. Keep an eye out for other kids in the parish who would be good acolytes and encourage them to serve.

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Can you think of more? What are some additional ways child acolytes can practice leadership? Share your thoughts, because your insights are valuable.

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For more posts in the leadership series, click here.

Yesterday, I suggested parishes use this coming year as a time of preparation for the introduction of the new Roman Missal and as a time of liturgical renewal. To help you do that, you can find a liturgy self-assessment tool here. You can also consider some of these questions regarding your parish worship:

• Do visitors on Sunday always feel welcome and part of the community? (How do you know?)
• Do the ushers, greeters, staff members, and key volunteers all wear nametags?
• Are the lectors always well prepared, and do they proclaim with excellence? (What is your standard for “excellence”?)
• Does the music always meet the three criteria of being pastoral, liturgical, and musically excellent?
• Does the assembly know the music and sing confidently?
• Does the music reflect the diversity of your community?
• Is the presider always clear, confident, prayerful, well-prepared, and attentive?
• Are the homilies always relevant, surprising, and applicable to daily life?
• Are the acolytes well-trained and always fully engaged in the liturgy?
• Do the Communion ministers always exhibit a high-level of leadership and competence when serving?
• Do parishioners leave the liturgy inspired to live out the Gospel and evangelize others? (How do you know?)
• Do you avoid the three most common mistakes made every Sunday?

I’m sure this is not an exhaustive list. What else should be added to insure a powerful year of liturgical renewal?

We are about to have a nanosecond (in terms of church history) in which we can have a dramatic impact on the faith lives of Catholics. Catholic worshipers are beginning to be aware that a new translation of the Roman Missal is on the horizon. As we get closer to the mandatory implementation date, that awareness will grow. And so will their questions. Their number-one question will be: Why is this change being made?

There are many answers to that question, but there is only one that matters to your parishioners. It is the answer to a deeper, probably unspoken question: How will this change affect me?

How will we respond?

That is the golden opportunity before us. The introduction of the new translation will get people’s attention. They will have a genuine question about their experience of worship, and we will have a very brief window of time in which to answer that question. I think that means we have to do two things. First, we have to stir up as much buzz as possible about the new translation so more and more people will start to ask questions. Second, we have to prepare an answer to that deep, unspoken question.

If someone asks why these changes are being made (and is really asking how these changes will affect the way he worships) what will you reply? If you are standing in front of a room full of people who are asking that question or preaching at Sunday Mass about the coming changes, what will you say?

A deep question needs a deep answer

If you are not a fan of the new translation, it may be difficult to find a graceful answer. And if you are a fan of the new translation, it may be difficult to avoid getting bogged down in line-by-line comparisons of the old and new. In both cases, we have to broaden the scope of the answer to fit the deep concern of the question.

I don’t think most parishioners are going to be all that wrapped up in the new texts. Most of the changes will be in the words the presider says. The changes to the assembly responses will be novel and maybe even jarring for a while, but people will adapt quickly. So one possible answer could legitimately be that the parishioners’ experience of the liturgy will not change all that much.

Parishioners expect great things

However, I don’t think that is the answer people are looking for. I think they want to know that these changes are being made to improve the Mass and make worship better—more spiritual, more prayerful. They want to experience the liturgy as both more reverent and more fascinating. If you don’t like the new translation, you might find it difficult to promise them that. And if you do like the new translation, you would be overpromising if you expect a new text, alone, to accomplish improvements on that scale.

Time for a liturgical renewal

So here is the challenge before us. Between now and Advent 2011, what changes can we make to the way we worship every week so we can honestly say to parishioners that the introduction of the new missal will have a dramatic, positive impact on the quality of the liturgy? In other words, how can we grasp this brief opportunity—when we will have the attention of parishioners perhaps like no other time in our ministry—to institute a year-long liturgical renewal in our parishes? If we begin now to improve all aspects of our worship, by the time the new texts are introduced, they will be more smoothly incorporated into our more active and vibrant parish worship.

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?

Everyone in the parish can be a leader. Here are ten ways grade-level catechists can lead.

1. Learn the name of every child by the second meeting.
2. Start a blog on which you summarize your experience of each catechetical session. Invite parents to read and comment.
3. Pick a faith topic each month and learn more about it for your own enrichment.

4. Treat the children as though they are filled with faith—and they will be.
5. Arrive early.
6. If you meet in the parish school, have the children write notes to the school children to thank them for sharing their space.
7. Write a note yourself to the teacher whose room you share, thanking her for sharing her ministry of teaching.
8. Never yell.
9. Dress up a little to honor the dignity of your task.
10. Make a list of 20 affirmation statements you can use in your sessions. Make a new list every month.

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Can you think of more? What are some additional ways catechists can practice leadership? Share your thoughts, because your insights are valuable.

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See also these related articles:

• 10 leadership practices for greeters and ushers
• 10 leadership practices for communion ministers

This is a true story. A parishioner had an appointment with the pastor at noon. The woman arrived at the office at 11:55 a.m. The pastor was running a little late and showed up at 12:05 p.m.

Here’s what happened at noon. The parish secretary told the parishioner that she, the secretary, was going to lunch and the parishioner could not wait in the office alone. The parishioner would have to leave. As the pastor drove into the parking lot, he saw the parishioner driving away.

Now before you start judging the secretary, imagine what kind of system she must be working in to make that kind of behavior even thinkable. Most parishes do not have a secretary who would kick someone out of the office who had an appointment to be there. However, many parishes do have systems that ignore customer service.

We don’t think of parishioners as customers. For the most part, it is probably good that we don’t. We don’t want to go down the path of marketing faith in a way that competes with the entertainment industry. But in one sense, it would help us to think of parishes as service centers. What would happen if everyone on the parish staff and all the key volunteers thought of themselves as customer service agents? Every encounter with a parishioner or visitor would begin with the question, “How can I help you” or “How can I be of service?”

Is there some way you can tweak your parish system this week so it is more service oriented?