What most Parishes Get Wrong
Perhaps you have seen a Christian coffeehouse like “Holy Grounds” or “Immacu-latte.” These coffee shops tend to be a hub for Christians to hang out. My friend Andrew has an apostolate where he works with Catholic institutions to build coffee shops, however, his vision for his apostolate is different. He doesn’t want to create a space for Catholics to hang out. Andrew wants to create a space for Catholics to evangelize. The premise of Andrew’s apostolate is that most non-Christians (or fallen-away Christians) will not seek to engage with religion by going to a Church. These people are more likely to engage in dialogue around faith and religion in a comfortable setting like a coffeehouse. Andrew builds spaces for these two worlds to collide and dialogue with one another. This kind of setting is atypical for a local Christian hangout.
I had coffee with Andrew a couple of weeks ago and he shared an interesting story with me. Andrew was sitting in one of these typical Christian coffeehouses (like “Holy Grounds”) when a 19-year-old bisexual girl, with piercings on her face and tattoos up and down her arms, walked in with her girlfriend. The 2 girls got some coffee and cuddled up in a booth together to talk and watch some videos on their phones. Andrew told me everyone in the coffeehouse started staring at the girl. Someone even motioned to the barista and pointed. The tension in the coffeehouse was noticeable and the 2 girls eventually left. Andrew told me they never returned. The attitude of the Christians in the room was, “you are not welcome here.” They didn’t want to evangelize and welcome potential new Christians into the fold. These people wanted to build a “bubble,” and they didn’t want anyone to enter that bubble unless those that entered were already assimilated to our Christian beliefs.
This story stuck with me, and in particular, I kept thinking about the profile of the 19-year-old bisexual girl. Earlier this week, I was at a parish listening session (related to our Archdiocesan effort to prepare for the Synod of Synodality). We started our session in prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament. During prayer, the 19-year-old girl popped back in my head. I started to ponder, “in my local Archdiocese, where would this girl go to find a ministry that would meet her where she is at?” I couldn’t think of any ministry or parish in Denver that would meet this girl’s needs (and Denver has a TON of ministries). But that shouldn’t be the case. The Holy Spirit knows the needs of the people of God and the Holy Spirit provides the gifts necessary to meet the needs of the people. Despite this, I realized that almost every Catholic parish in my local area is set up to minister to only one kind of person - the perfect/ideological/nuclear Catholic family.
In my local Church, if you are a single parent, elderly shut-in, special needs family, LGBTQ person, public-school family, older and single, well catechized but hurt from your experiences in the Church or an atheist but spiritually curious, good luck finding a ministry that meets you where you are at. If you are married, have 5 children, and want to live in a safe, Catholic bubble, the Archdiocese of Denver has all kinds of ministries for you!
So what exactly are we getting wrong? In my experience, most ministries (especially Catholic parishes) do not do the work to “profile” the people that they are seeking to serve. If a Catholic ministry knew that their target audience was the 19-year-old bisexual girl, they would gear all of their efforts toward the profile of that person. But we don’t do that in the Church. We follow our programs instead of paying attention to our people and the result is that parishes all serve the same kind of person. Jesus told his followers that the Good Shepherd leaves the 99 sheep in search of the 1. Nowadays, our flocks have about 7 sheep and 93 are missing. Despite this, we are exclusively focused on the 7.
The work of my apostolate (Andrew Ministries) is primarily focused on improving our broken systems of youth ministry in the Catholic Church. It has occurred to me that the Church experience of the vast majority of Catholic youth can be summarized with the phrase, “I don’t belong here.” This reason alone could be sufficient in explaining why young people are leaving the Catholic Church in droves. This is why Andrew Ministries is focused on throwing out the broken systems, putting down the typical youth ministry playbook, and focusing on ministering to the needs of the young people in front of us. If more Catholic parishes did the work of identifying the needs and the “profile” of the people they are seeking to serve, I believe we would have much better results.
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