Pastoral Planning 101

For those of us who experienced pastoral planning at parish or diocesan levels over time, we have seen changes that make the practices of the past seem unrecognizable. Key to those changes is a re-examination of the underlying purpose of pastoral planning in the light of what the Church teaches us rather than only what secular planning practice can tell us. The two keys to pastoral planning as we know it today are that the core purpose and measure of success is a stronger communio for missio, and that it is primarily a relational process, not structural. Gone are the days of plans taking up reams of paper, five-year plans, and lock-step compliance. Replacing this is a planning experience that is intrinsically evangelizing for all participants and for those reached by ministry the Church does in the name of Christ. There is compelling mission-based rationale for pastoral planning.

A Brief Historical Context

There have been four major eras of pastoral planning in the U.S. Catholic Church since around the time of World War II. In all but one, the experience of pastoral planning has often left participants frustrated, resistant to engaging in more planning, and wondering if pastoral planning is worth the effort.

Era 1 – Command and Control: As Catholic soldiers returned to their parishes and dioceses from World War II and gave advice to bishops and pastors, they recommended using a military “command and control” model for leading and managing dioceses and parishes. Planning was a centralizing, highly controlled and controlling process. The diocese told parishes what to do.

Era 2 – Expansion of Bureaucracy: By the 1960s the U.S. Church was asking itself what it could learn from corporate America about how to lead and manage dioceses and parishes. It was in this era that the number of staff for both dioceses and parishes exponentially expanded. Dioceses still told parishes how to go about their business, including how to plan. At its worst, dioceses made decisions about parishes and then dressed those up within quasi-consultative processes that were attempts to hide the fact that the key decisions were already made. Dioceses used an “expert model” wherein they ran programs for parishes, pastors and parish staff who were regarded as empty vessels to be filled with the expertise diocesan leaders and staff could provide. This was the era of external planning consultants who largely used corporate models for pastoral planning. In fact, the terms “pastoral planning” and “strategic planning” became interchangeable during this era. The diocese and parishes often engaged external experts to lead planning that took months or even years to complete. It was the era of “Five Year Plans.”

Era 3 – Right-Sizing Administration: The U.S. Church felt the impact of the financial breaches of trust and of the sex abuse crisis in the early 1990s, and that showed itself in two ways that apply here. It showed in the inability of the U.S. Church to financially support the parish and diocesan staffing levels created in the bureaucratic era. It also showed itself in overt mistrust between laity, pastors, diocesan administrators, and bishops. This led to a lack of confidence and trust in any form of centrally initiated or led planning. Parishes resisted efforts of dioceses to lead their planning, and dioceses did strategic planning with little or no useful impact on parishes. Many pastors ignored diocesan leaders and hunkered down to focus on caring for their parishioners. This led to a time of a drifting and directionless Church.

Era 4 – A New-Old Direction: Around 2010 the sex abuse crisis was clearly transitioning from its focus on perpetrators and victims to a focus on discovering systemic and cultural causes plus accountability for senior Church leaders and administrators for covering up abuse. This was a time of significant rethinking, new perspective and asking questions that had not been part of planning conversations for some time. It was clear that the Command-and-Control Model, the variations of Corporate America-Bureaucratic Models, and the directionlessness of the 1990s were not working for the U.S. Church. Some new thinking was needed in the realm of pastoral planning. It was in this most recent era that several solutions began to emerge in both the conversation and practice of Church administrations relative to planning.

1. A body of research based in study of a broad sample of diocesan practice articulated best practices and standards for practice for diocesan administration (Lundholm-Eades, 2016, Mission Management Model). Until this time bishops, vicars general, chancellors and others in senior Church leadership each “flew by the seat of their pants,” and each worked out for themselves how to perform their roles. Some elements important to pastoral planning that emerged from this time are:

• The costliest and least effective way to do diocesan administration is for the central office to run programs for parishes. The cheapest and most effective way to influence parishes is for the diocesan administration to adopt a capacity building model based on connecting best practice parishes to each other and to good practice parishes so they learn from each other.
• The mission of the Church is universal, not local. Mission is a unifying factor. What that mission looks like on a local level at a particular time is what changes and what must be planned. As Catholics we read the “signs of the times” as the Church has always done, and “break open” the universal mission in terms of how we go about it in the local Church at diocesan and parish levels.
• Pastoral planning has a specific place in a model for Church administration. It is an ongoing process far more than an event. This model for pastoral Administration shows the context of planning in the overall leadership and management model for dioceses and parishes. Pastoral planning exists only in the context of distributive Catholic leadership, based in Catholic values, theology, canon law, and so on, and in the context of it leading to organization of people and other resources, as well as execution. In best practice terms, execution of a plan only happens when progress is measurable and measured – thus the importance of establishing a means for accountability in the system of Church leadership and management.

A Model for Pastoral Management

The fundamental starting point for planning has clarified and shifted. Post-World War II Church leaders did planning motivated by gaining for the Church a perception of command and control. In the Bureaucratic era planning processes were aligned with corporate planning that was designed to gain competitive advantage. In the Right-Sizing era planning was motivated by the need to find solutions to a financial problem. The shift underlying the current era is to ask different questions:

• We know the mission – What does that look like in our ever-changing current reality?
• What is a better way of being Church and fulfilling the mission given to us by Christ?
• What does the Church itself tell us about planning?

In other words, current thinking on pastoral planning is derived from Church teaching rather than corporate thinking or seeking command and control. This historical context lays the foundation for breaking open best practice for pastoral planning.

What Is Pastoral Planning?

Understanding pastoral planning requires separating pastoral planning from strategic planning and parish re-organization both in concept and in practice. Pastoral Planning and strategic planning are related but different. Pastoral planning is delineating how the universal mission of the Church and signs of the times for the local Church interact and sets the overall direction and boundaries within which the local Church lives. Strategic planning is organizing and structuring how best to implement the pastoral plan and measure progress. Parish reorganization must be undertaken from time to time in dioceses, but only in the context of having used pastoral planning to establish priorities and direction.

As we see from the historical context outlined above, in times past planning in the U.S. Church began with models created for secular organizations and businesses. Today, the starting frame of reference for pastoral planning is what Catholic teaching tells us about planning. We then take the tools of strategic planning that best apply in the Catholic context and use them as needed. Pastoral planning is Catholic, mission driven, and data informed, and directly related to the capacity to organize people and resources, and to establishing robust means for measuring progress.

The “Why” of Pastoral Planning Matters

Why we engage in pastoral planning is based in the key concepts of synodality and evangelization. Done well, it is an intrinsically evangelizing process. It involves meaningful encounters with both Christ and each other. It involves accompaniment and witness to how best to be Church as well as the communio going out to do the mission given by Christ. The why of Pastoral Planning is that as a result of the process we have a stronger communio for missio. In the Catholic worldview communio exists for missio and missio flows from communio. Contrast this outcome to the experiences of pastoral planning that have been divisive and ended in anger and frustration. The process needs to be designed based on evangelization and on experience of synodality.

In the last forty years, planning in Catholic dioceses has been dominated by one or more of three motivations:

• Managing decline in the Church
• Financial necessity and priest demography (supply of priests and their capacity for pastoral leadership and sometimes management)
• A better idea for how to be Church.

We know from practice and research that only the last of these has led to successful pastoral planning, the kind that strengthens communio for missio. The experience of dioceses that have been motivated by managing decline or addressing financial woes is that planning most often results in division, anger, and resentment among Catholics. It has led to parish reorganizations unattached to mission priorities. It also has resulted in dioceses having to repeatedly come back to the parish reorganization question, often three to four times, until the diocese and its parishioners are exhausted by the emotional and pastoral cost of the process. The key measure of success in pastoral planning is the degree to which it has strengthened the experience of communio for the sake of missio.

Some Key Concepts

The Catholic worldview, according to the writings of John Paul II, holds that communio exists for missio and missio flows out of communio. In particular, the relationships strengthened by pastoral planning should be the relationships between parishes, between clergy, between clergy and laity and between bishop and clergy. Our unifying principle is Christ and the mission He gave us as Church. The notion of the People of God journeying together gathered around their bishop is core to being Catholic. In recent years the Church, led by Pope Francis, has returned to this notion by his emphasis on “living as synodal Church.” Pastoral planning as described here is congruent with the co-responsible leadership, clergy, and laity together, that is described in literature on synodality provided by the USCCB. It is “synod implementation” in action.

Catholic teaching on subsidiarity calls us to making decisions as the lowest level possible consistent with Catholic teaching and justice. Hence the meetings between parishioners form multiple parishes, meetings between clergy and between clergy, laity and the bishop that make up what we have recently experienced as synods. The USCCB has published multiple works on how to go about holding synods, so this will not be repeated here. How pastoral planning emerges from that synodal process is a “relational” process. The product of such a planning process is a set of two or three pastoral priorities and a set of boundaries based in the signs of the times, Catholic theology, canon law, Catholic teaching and traditions, and prayerful discernment of the will of God undertaking by the bishop, clergy, and laity. The prayerful, reflective, and patient interaction between the people of God and the leadership of the Church ensure that the priorities and boundaries articulated and authorized by the bishop are clear, concise enough to be remembered, and relevant to the mission given by Christ as lived by the local Church. What also emerges from the process is stronger relationships between parishes, between clergy and laity, between clergy and the bishop, all for the sake of the mission.

A real example will illustrate the outcomes of pastoral planning.

This diocese held a synod involving parishioners over twelve-month period. The bishop also arranged many other concurrent consultations (the college of consulters, the presbyteral council, the diocesan pastoral council, the diocesan finance council, and so on) and informal groups (parish meetings, deanery meetings, and so on) After setting aside time for quiet reflection on all that had been heard at these consultations, the bishop, who had only been in the diocese a short time, announced the priorities and direction for the diocese for the coming years as:

• Our parishes will become centers of mercy and charity.
• Our leadership, clergy and laity, will become characterized by being co-responsible for the mission.
• Every deanery will be financially stable and self-supporting.

In announcing this he reiterated some key elements of what had been heard in the consultations. This diocese had been devastated by the abuse crisis and by both financial mismanagement and impropriety. Clergy were demoralized and the parishes were deeply into hunkering down in fear of whatever might hit them next. The bishop, in speaking the themes, articulated the mission in terms described by Pope Francis in Joy of the Gospel and as three movements:

• We will move from being known as the Church of abuse to being known as the Church of mercy and charity.
• We will move from a Church known for separation and suspicion between clergy and laity to a Church known as a Church wherein clergy and laity are co-responsible for the mission given by Christ.
• We will move from a Church known for financial mismanagement and failure to a Church of best practice, financial stability, and transparency.

He set a timeframe of five years to accomplish this. He set the task of accomplishing this as the co-responsibility of parishes working together in deaneries, not just as individual parishes. He clarified the leadership role of deans. He set timelines for parishes to make their plans for making progress and for making their plans available for other parishes using the services of the diocesan pastoral center as a coordinating body for making sure the good work of parishes could be available to all. He set timeliness for implementation of plans and set up deaneries as the basic unit of accountability for making progress. In response to what was heard in the consultations the bishop also set boundaries within which deaneries were to plan and implement. In this particular diocese those boundaries were:

• Stay within current Catholic teaching and canon law.
• Every Catholic must access sacraments within 25 minutes’ drive or public transport.
• Clergy will lead no more than three weekend liturgies each weekend and work a maximum of 60 hours per week.
• Pastors will serve no more than two primary parish or mass sites.
• Every deanery will financially be able to make ends meet.
• We will prioritize service to the local poor and marginalized: we will include them. We will not abandon them.
• We will maximize access to Catholic schools where they currently exist without compromising the viability of any deanery.

Keys to Successful Pastoral Planning

We know from practice and research across many dioceses that success in pastoral planning is directly dependent upon five key factors.

1. Broad access to relevant data set that covers regional demographics, finances, parish data trends, and other matters as needed, including capital projects and schools. While there is often a huge amount of data available at the diocesan office, a diocese needs to choose which data trends or points are important to this particular pastoral planning.
2. Identifying or hiring diocesan staff with the time and capacity to support pastoral planning. This may involve some reorganization within the diocesan office to free up capacity for support of pastoral planning. In some cases, this reorganization is minimal and in others there is a need to reframe the overall purpose and functions of the diocesan office and restructure to meet those purposes and functions.
3. Formation and catechesis of leadership is essential to success. There is a difference between training, education, formations, and catechesis. Training offers skills in operational practice. Education offers the “why.” Formation grows the spirituality of leaders. Catechesis aims at conversion to Christ. Leaders such as deans, diocesan personnel, vicars, council members and pastors may need training and education. However, if it stops there, pastoral planning will fail to be a moment of evangelization, of unity, of building a stronger communio for missio. Pastoral planning will fail in its core purpose.
4. Established communication capacity for the pastoral planning process. This includes:

• The capacity to listen:
  • to receive, synthesize, summarize, and disseminate information between deaneries, directly to both leadership and parishioners.
  • To receive, synthesize, summarize, and disseminate information between deaneries and the diocese — including the pathway for communications.
• The capacity to speak:
  • to provide guidance and encouragement to the deaneries from the diocese and to the diocese from the deaneries.
• The capacity to measure and share progress across the diocese.

1.  Building the capacity to do strategic planning.

The literature generated by research and practice among secular organizations on how to organize people, finances, priorities, to plan implementation sequences (we often call this “Roadmapping”) becomes essential to success in bringing a pastoral plan to the life of the Church. This is where the Church taps the insight and gifts of the laity.

A new concept of a “diocesan plan”

In historical iterations of pastoral planning, the diocese produced a document that became the plan for all to follow. We know now that pastoral planning is relational in nature. The diocesan plan, then, becomes made up of the opportunities deaneries have to interact to share how they are implementing the themes of the pastoral plan, opportunities to showcase successes and share the narrative between parishes of successes, failures and what has been learned from both. The plan exists in people and may, at times, be committed to paper for the sake of effective communication between deaneries and parishes. The diocesan role is to encourage connection between parishes and between deaneries as well as ongoing formation and catechesis of leaders. The diocesan plan is a stronger communio for missio.

Some Challenges in Pastoral Planning

A challenge exists in creating a new kind of relationship between parishes and between clergy and lay leaders consistent with synodality. For the purpose of pastoral planning, this is expressed as “Co-responsibility.” Sometimes the people involved, both clergy and laity, have a default leadership and participation culture that is inconsistent with synodality. That needs to be addressed through both education and prayerful formation prior to and throughout pastoral planning.

Participants in pastoral planning are challenged by the need to think beyond their own parish, to think system wide. The core purpose of pastoral planning requires participants to think about Church both regionally and at diocesan level. Participants are challenged to communicate between parishes. Leading participants, both clergy and laity, are challenged to communicate with those co-responsible for planning in a way that includes pathways for both listening and speaking.

Participants are challenged to think of mission as universal to the Church, not just their parish or even their diocese. In essence, they are challenged to be in relationship with Christ and with People of God whom they either do not know or hardly know. It requires an outward orientation, and orientation toward evangelization of those beyond their particular community.

In Conclusion

The outcome of pastoral planning of most value to the Church is new connections and stronger communio focused on missio. In doing this we share our best ideas between parishes, between deaneries, wither the whole of the diocese. Pastoral planning is no longer about having everyone doing the same thing: it is about leveraging the gifts of the whole Church for a better Church, a Church more able than ever to be the light of Christ. Good pastoral planning recognizes the many dimensions of reality as the signs of the times such as the financial condition of our parishes, numbers of clergy, demographic trends, and pastoral needs of the faithful and those whom we evangelize. We are motivated to this kind of pastoral planning by our desire for a better Church for the sake of the mission.