What is Parish-Centered Evangelization?
The parish is the heart of evangelization -- but what exactly does a heart do? Are you asking the heart to take on roles that are better carried out by other parts of the body?
My son lives next door to Our Lady of Higher Education, a parish located immediately adjacent to a public university. OLHE isn’t a university-run campus ministry, it is a diocesan parish; the parishioners are a combination of students and community residents. As you can expect, the parish does quite a lot of work evangelizing students. Associated with that parish are several types of student ministries:
Events organized by the parish, under the supervision of the pastor and responsible to the diocese.
Events organized by FOCUS, on-campus at the invitation of the parish.
Catholic faith-based student organizations formed under the (secular) university’s regulations for student organizations, run by enrolled students, faculty, and staff.
Personal initiatives organized by parishioners that have no formal affiliation with either the parish or the university.
(I use the example of student ministries because that’s who lives near this particular parish. Your parish’s geographic center might have a large population of young families, or urban professionals, or individuals living on the street, or retirees, or migrant workers — just translate the concepts accordingly. We serve our neighbors, whoever those neighbors might be.)
In each of these categories are ministries or apostolates that are serving, each in their distinctive way, the same group of students; each is run by parishioners of the same parish. The pastor of Our Lady of Higher Ed is the pastor of the individuals involved in all of these activities, and in his capacity as pastor he provides spiritual guidance to any of his parishioners inclined to receive it — but he is only administratively responsible for the initiatives that are carried out as official parish activities.
This is what parish-based evangelization looks like. When we say evangelization is parish-centered, it doesn’t meant that every single evangelizing effort is formally administered by the parish (or diocesan) bureaucracy. Heaven knows the staff have enough work already!
Some evangelization and discipleship work is the responsibility of the parish, either by obligation (ex: sacramental prep) or by choice (ex: the parish St. Vincent de Paul society). But in a healthy parish there will be many initiatives that are carried out by parishioners working in another capacity (ex: nurses at the local Catholic hospital), or by parishioners operating in a completely private capacity (ex: a small before-work Bible study).
All of these, though, are “parish-centered” because:
Parishioners make the parish the center — think of it as a base camp — of their spiritual lives.
Parishioners learn from each other and mentor one another.
Parishioners collaborate with each other.
Pastors support the spiritual needs of parishioners, helping them develop the maturity necessary to carry out their individual vocations.
In a healthy parish, there is a communal sense of enthusiasm both for the vital formal ministries of the parish and for the many initiatives beyond the parish walls that make it possible to minister to souls who could not be reached any other way.
Because all Catholics need a parish of some kind, by definition evangelization is a parish-driven activity. The Eucharist as source and summit of our faith is both the engine driving evangelization and the final destination of those we evangelize. Where does one find the Eucharist? In the parish.