The equipping ministry process is designed to support Christians to do the work of evangelization—witnessing and sharing—as individuals in the world. However, parishes are also a subject of the call to evangelize. Parishes have collective gifts, can be matched with opportunities to make a difference in the world, and are called to ongoing growth.

Parishes should incorporate gospel values in everything they do. The manner in which parishes are administered is one area where one can see potential for this. Too many parishes pay their employees below reasonable rates and/or avoid paying benefits by limiting hours worked. As another example, parishes can have embarrassingly negative environmental impacts, including low recycling rates, heavy use of disposable food service items, old energy-intensive appliances, use of non-recycled paper, and low initiative in improving energy efficiency (such as purchasing compact fluorescent light bulbs).¹ If parish leaders expect members of the parish to apply gospel values in their lives, they should ensure that these same values are being put into practice on the parish plant. In addition to being the morally correct thing to do, modeling gospel values is an effective way to form and encourage parishioners.

But gospel values should also inform what a parish chooses to do in the first place. Just like individual Christians, parishes need to continually discern how God is calling them to use their gifts and change the world. While parishes have an incredible latent power to better the world, it can be hard to realize.

In a sense, everything that happens in a parish is corporate action: parishioners' contributions pay for use of the buildings, staff salaries, and supplies. Unfortunately, there is often a disconnect between parishioners and the parish's actions. Parishes do a poor job of clearly communicating their purpose and getting buy-in from their members. Instead of being a true, collective purpose held by all members, it may instead be only the purpose held by the pastor, staff, or key leaders. Once a purpose is clear, members need to understand how individual decisions by the parish fit into this purpose. Parishioners need to understand that evangelization is the purpose of the parish, so that they can participate in a corporate discernment process.

St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Wichita, Kansas is an example of what a Catholic parish can do when it acts corporately.² When it committed to become a "stewardship parish" in 1994, its membership was largely blue-collar with an average annual income of $40,000. The parish philosophy is that regular collections are pooled for all the work of the parish, limiting the only special collections to Christmas and Easter. The parish gives 10 percent of all income to causes outside the parish. The parish funds an elementary school that members can attend for free—paying teachers approximately 90 percent of public school salaries—and pays tuitions for its teenagers to attend diocesan high schools. The parish started and maintains both a health clinic for the surrounding community and a retreat house for priests. The parish is able to accomplish all of this with strong support of time, talent, and treasure from its members, including collections of $85,000 each Sunday (an average of $31 per family).

While the specific examples of this parish are impressive, what is more important is to appreciate the scale of what parishioners can accomplish when working together. Parishes are bound more often by their imaginations than by their ability to affect change.

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