We are creatures of habit and bad habits are very hard to kill.

The same is true within parishes attempting to do something concerning the New Evangelization. Most parishes are still waiting for the next “Magic Pill” that will solve the “absence of parishioner engagement” problem.  You know what I’m talking about, the next program that is going to solve all the problems.

When training parish staff, I have begun to tell the story of my home sewage septic system that broke one weekend. I have a sump pump system that when broken, overflows into the cavity under my basement concrete slab. When that fills up, it overflows into my basement.

I share how after calling every plumber in the book, no one would come to bail me out. (No pun intended). So I had to bail out fifty five-gallon buckets of sewage water, just to get to the top of the forty-gallon tank. After another 30 gallons of water, I finally reached the top of the pump and the solid waste.

Only after pulling out the pump, was I able to discover what was wrong and fix it. As you can imagine, at this point of the story most of the staff are looking for a way to get out of the rest of the training. Lol. I must say that it does seem to reduce the amount of snacking during the training. ;0)

Unless we enter the nastiness of our dysfunction, we will never fix the problems.

A majority of churches are so program dependant that they do not know how to do ministry outside of a program. Therefore, they keep using the same ineffective programs until the next one is created.

Parishes simply do not want to do the work that it is going to take to get in there and examine what is wrong. They are acting like me when I realized there was no help coming to fix my septic system. For a good hour, I brainstormed on how I can just ignore the problem without having to suffer the pain of getting in there.

“Can I just buy some more air fresheners?

“If I don’t go down there I won’t see the problem.”

We are doing the same things in our churches:

“This is the way we have always done it.”

“Maybe if we offer food, they will come.”

“Ok so most of my teens still question whether they believe in God, at least they got confirmed.”

Let’s face it. Our churches are in rapid decline because we have been ignoring the signs for years and now reaping what we have been sowing. We have been living like it is all about the Sacraments and that is what our current parent population believes.

It is time for us to stop waiting for the magic pill and get in there and do the work nobody wants to do.  God, give us the grace to die this death.