catholicmissionarydisciples.com
2026-11-09
If you lived in the age of newspapers, then you probably have memories of reading them regularly, even if it was just the Sunday comics. Flash forward to today and we have had a sharp decline in the number of newspapers that still operate. In fact, nearly 40% of all U.S. newspapers have closed in the past 20 years (Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism).
Some may say the internet killed newspapers, but that isn't the full story. What killed most newspapers is they forgot their mission and confused it with their method. Their mission was giving the public the news. Their method was printing newspapers. When they failed to adapt they paid the price for doing so by running the businesses into the ground.
Unfortunately, this is not unlike many Catholic parishes. Most Catholic parishes are stuck in a culture that rewards status quo. No program, event, new idea, tweaking of old ways, conference, gimmick, or online video series will change our parishes. We know this. YOU know this. In many places, we are unable to discern what the difference is between method and mission. This is how parishes get stuck - when we no longer can discern the difference between method and mission.
Here is how this problem shows up:
METHODS BEFORE MISSION
When method comes before mission, we have things backwards, and yet it is how most parishes operate. Mission is why the parish exists (to make disciples). Methods are what we do about the mission. If we have no clarity about the mission, then the methods overtake it and become it. We exist for the programs, the events, the churn of activity, all the "stuff" on the calendar.