Driving Parish Engagement—May 5, 2026

Does your parish life need a boost? Learn how to drive more engagement in parishes by identifying behaviors and measuring outcomes. Jon talks strategy for outcomes in this episode of Catholic Ministry Professionals.

Transcript

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Before we begin, we just want to let you know that Catholic Ministry Professionals is brought to you by Briar Cliff University. Briar Cliff provides a vibrant community, top-notch faculty, and cutting edge programs that empower you to reach your full potential. So whether you're pursuing a degree in business, healthcare, or the arts, Briar Cliff can provide an environment where you can thrive. Learn more at Briarcliff.edu to start your transformative academic experience. And now, on with the show. But here's the problem: Parishes chase engagement without ever defining what it is that they're chasing. And so today we are going to fix that. Parishes tend to spin their wheels on engagement because they're trying to solve a problem they've never named. And if you know anything, if you've been listening to us for a while, you know that naming the problem is a big part of pursuing the solution. You can't measure something you haven't defined. You can't win a game that doesn't have a scoreboard. And you can't lead people somewhere if you don't know where you're going. Leaders know they want more, right? You know that. But more of what exactly? That's the question. More warm bodies at events, uh, more kids in religious ed, or something that's a little harder to count. And I think this is really what we're after. We want parents who own their faith. We want families making real decisions based on the values that they find in the gospel. We want parishioners who see themselves as missionaries. But without a definition, like every effort that we put out there feels like even though we're working hard, that it's working and it's failing at the same time. And so today we're going to dive into the three things. We're going to address this with some specific things that you can do to begin to transform your parish through your work. And so the first thing that we need to do, if we want to move the metric, if we want to move the bar, if we want to move the needle on engagement, the first thing we need to do is define what engagement means. And so this is where parishes tend to get stuck. This is where pastors get stuck. This is where really strong leaders in the parish get stuck because they have this desire for more people to come in, to enter in, to become engaged, but we don't know what it means. And so we need to start by asking: what does engaged look like in a person? Is it attendance, right? Is it just attendance in OCIA or sacramental prep, religious sed? Yeah, maybe. That's not a bad thing, but probably it's less tangible. And like we said above, it's the parent who takes ownership of their family, um, of their family's faith. That's it's a parishioner who lives. You can see that their life has been transformed by the gospel and that they're living that on Tuesday morning, right? Whatever it is that we want, we need to really kind of name it. What's the vision here when you look at the parish and you think about engaged parishioners? You have to define that. You have to make it concrete enough that you'd recognize it when you see it. And that's really the goal. Because again, if there's nothing, if there's nothing to measure, there's no way to know if we're winning. All right. And that leads us into the second thing we need to talk about today, which is that we need to identify the behaviors that drive those metrics. So I get, I said this thing that you're desiring, this engagement, what it looks like, it's probably harder to define than you think. When you try to think about it concretely, it it kind of evades definition a little bit. And so the way we make that concrete is by naming the behaviors that drive that thing. Because once you know what that success looks like, it's gonna be easier to work backwards from that. So, what would people have to do differently to get to that point, if that makes sense? The what behaviors that those specific observable actions that are gonna move the needle on that definition, that, that, that vision, that picture that you're trying to paint. This is where strategy becomes intentional action, because you're not, you're not guessing at how to get there anymore. You're connecting the outcome to the behaviors that are going to get you there. And vice versa, right? You're connecting the behaviors to the outcome you desire and you're building that path. And you, you know, we've talked about this before that the system that you have right now is perfectly designed to get you the results that you currently have. And so you may need to change then some of the processes. And that's part three. That's number three of the three things. Once you've you've kind of identified, defined what engagement means, then you would identify the behaviors that get you there. And then the third one is to change the processes and expectations that are producing the wrong behaviors. Because this is this is the truth. The behaviors that you don't want are usually the logical result of the systems you've built. If parents aren't owning their faith, then you need to ask what your current process is asking of them, right? If people are showing up passively, ask, ask what the behavior or what the environment is rewarding. So you don't fix behaviors just by demanding different ones. You fix the processes and the expectations that are producing them. And so let's try to hopefully make this a little bit more concrete with an example. Let's say the pastor or someone in the parish, they're looking out and they're saying, you know, we need more engagement, right? That's the whole thing for today. And so we launch a new event series. You know, we we've got a Bible study and we're gonna offer it for Lent, right, over the next six weeks. We send some emails, we had a ministry fair after Mass. Six months later, it's just the same people showing up to this that you already expected to show up. It's it's the same energy, and and you have the same frustration that you had going into it. So here's here's a look at what here's a look at what went wrong is that we never answered that first question. Imagine we start over now, and the, you know, we've got this vision, this desire for more engagement. We start over, we sit down, we think about what engagement means, and we decide this. And this is, I notice this is much more concrete than just I want people to own their faith. We sit down and we say that engagement looks a lot like a parent that takes their kids to confession at least once a month and that they're having faith conversations at home. Right. We're gonna start with that, a very concrete definition. And that gives us a scoreboard because that's that is something you can track. All right. Now, from there, we have to work backwards. Okay, well, what behaviors would need to change in order to get parents to do this, to take their kids to confession once a month and have faith faith conversations at home, right? So, in order to do that, the parents, they would need to feel equipped, not just invited, they would need to feel equipped to have those conversations. So we need to then instructure the offering instead of, you know, whatever thing it might be from Ascension Press or Word on Fire. No, I actually have a very specific thing I want to teach our parents. And we're gonna hit that hard over these next six weeks. So we're we're equipping them, we're not just inviting them. And then the behavior that we're targeting, it's it's parents initializing, initiating faith conversations at home, not just going to an event, but coming here, getting equipped, and then being sent into the home. And then we look at our current like religious ed process, right? Because we can invite them, but that might not get us what we want. So, religious ed, currently, what we have is we have parents that drop their kids off. And then the parents either they go shopping for an hour or they sometimes they just sit in the parking lot for an hour, they go to the gas station, they get a cup of coffee or hot chocolate or whatever, and then they pick the kids up and they drive home. And that process is producing exactly the behaviors that we don't want, which is passive, disconnected parents who are simply outsourcing their kids' faith to the church and to the parish. And so what we want to do is change that expectation. Instead of, hey, drop your kids off and then go and then come and then they'll walk out to you. Parents, you need to come inside. That's the change that we're communicating for this year. You come inside and you get a five-minute formation moment before pickup. So, parents, we need you to be here five minutes before it ends. Or maybe it's easier to keep the parents for five minutes after they show up. But over time, what you're doing is giving them short take-home conversation guides that they can actually use. They can be equipped. And I'll be the first to admit, not everybody's going to do it. But if you equip them, make it so simple and so easy, something that's going to connect to what their kids are doing. Parents want to connect with their kids. They want the faith for their kids and they want to feel like they can do it. So now you've just changed this one little thing. You're not changing and overhauling the whole program. You're you're modifying this one moment information so that the parents are receiving and having to opt into the behavior that you expect of them so that we can change that behavior and lead to then the outcome, which is more engaged parents, more engaged parishioners. So you've got the same parish, you've got the same families, but you've got different results because we started with a definition of what engagement looks like for your parish. And I think with that, we can move on to the devil's advocate. And the the thing in my head, it's a little buzzline I put out there before, is that this sounds like a huge overhaul, right? We don't have the capacity for that. But you don't need a big overhaul. You need a small, faithful move. And it could be in the context of a program. If you're not in charge of that program or you don't want to micromanage the person who's in charge of the program, I want to think about this. And it's it's something that I've been developing over a little while here. But I want to think about what it would look like if you're a pastor listening to this, if you're a formation director listening to this, and you don't feel like you're ready to overhaul the whole program, what it would look like instead of overhauling the whole program to commit to meeting with three people, just three people, right? To disciple them and to hand off a process of intentional evangelization, because I think it'll likely have more impact quicker than trying to change a whole program and move the whole ship. It's it's faster than a program relaunch. So it's it's not that's not a small thing dressed up as a big thing. That's a like a minimum viable change with a great missional impact. You reclaiming time for discipleship, um, producing near immediate fruit, like you're identifying three specific people in your parish that you you know they're like at that point when they need to do more, but we haven't found the thing in the parish that initializes them. And here's the thing is what once you do that with those three people, it's duplicatable, right? It's a repeatable process, and you could do it over and over again. So those three people then move on, and their goal is to disciple three more people. That's how the church grew the first time, right? Jesus had his multitudes, but he invested in 12. And even in that, he had a subset of three that he really duplicated himself in. And that's what I want to encourage you to think about, right? This is where we're headed with something that I've been developing that I'm calling the invitation. And I'm going to share more about that soon. But the seat of it is really this: you don't need scale in order to start. You just need faithfulness and a process. And of course, you never want to leave you with something that you can take action on today based from our conversation. So, first thing to do before you do anything else this week, sit down. If you're like, if you're on fire for engagement, you're you're primed for it, you're ready for it, you desire it. First thing you need to do is sit down and write down your definition of engagement. What does it look like? One sentence, right? What does an engaged parishioner in your parish look like? And share it with one person on your team. See if they agree. Start that conversation today. And step two, share this episode. If you're if you're listening to this episode, but you're not in charge of a parish program, you're not the pastor, take this episode and text it to your pastor today or a friend in ministry and just have that conversation and say, where does this take us? Is this a desire that's kind of ruminating in your heart as well? Let's have that conversation. And finally, step three, if you want help building like the clarity, the structure that it takes to make these things real, you can book a discovery call at Catholic Ministry Professionals.com today. And with that, I want to thank you for listening to this episode. If you found it helpful, you know, give us a like, give us a subscribe, share with a friend, and with that, we'll see you in the vineyard. The Catholic Ministry Professionals Podcast is brought to you by Briar Cliff University. Briar Cliff provides a vibrant community, top notch faculty, and cutting edge programs that empower you to reach your full potential. So whether you're pursuing a degree in business, healthcare, or the arts, Briar Cliff provides an environment where you can thrive. Learn more at Briarcliff.edu to start your transformative academic experience.