Parish pastoral councils improving the life of their parish
There is a dedicated group of parishioners quietly at work in parishes across the Archdiocese of Newark. Through prayer and discussion, this leadership group strives to understand its parish and carry out its mission.
Known as parish pastoral council members, these lay faithful collaborate with their pastor to be an enabling source that aids God in making transformations in the areas of word, worship, community, and service.
“Councils are trying to read the pulse of the parish and improve the life of the parish,” explained said Sr. Donna L. Ciangio, O.P., chancellor of the Archdiocese of Newark. “It’s an opportunity for collaboration between the parishioners and pastor and staff so that the pastor hears from people on the ground what’s going on.”
Before coming to Newark at the urging of Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R., in 2018, Sister Donna spent over 20 years building small faith communities with RENEW International and the National Pastoral Life Center. She is on a mission to do the same in the Archdiocese of Newark.
Sister Donna and the team have connected with over 100 parish pastoral councils. They plan to continue training in the Fall and beyond so that all parishes can get started or continue to develop and orient new members. There are 212 parishes in the archdiocese.
“Every parish should have a parish pastoral council,” she said, noting that Cardinal Tobin has prioritized the formation of these councils as part of his Forward in Faith Together vision for the archdiocese. Archdiocesan pastoral planning is one of the six key pillars of the vision, along with active engagement of the laity in parish and archdiocesan leadership roles.
To this end, Sister Donna has been presenting workshops to help parishes form new councils or improve already existing teams.
The New Energies Office with the Archdiocese of Newark offers a second workshop focusing on parish vitality and the six areas identified by the recent study released by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.
Sister Donna has also begun parish workshops around the strategic planning workbook she authored as the companion action piece to Forward in Faith Together.
St. Raphael Parish in Livingston
A vibrant parish pastoral council can do wonders for a parish. At St. Raphael Parish in Livingston, a new social concerns ministry sprung up when parishioners saw a need and acted.
“A group of people came to us and said we’d like to form a social concerns ministry,” said Karen Kundla, president of St. Raphael’s parish pastoral council. “We talked to them about what they wanted to do and gave input. They felt very strongly about doing it, and so they chose some activities that they could start with.”
During the pandemic, volunteers fixed up an unused room in the parish and put the call out for essential food items.
“We filled an entire room with food. Then, the ministry said if you just call the office, we’ll deliver food to your porch contact-free,” Kundla said. “Our parish is incredibly good at supporting people in need.”
Last year the ministry asked parishioners to provide 50 backpacks for needy school children in Newark. They quickly achieved that goal, with supplies to spare. The project will continue next year with a higher goal.
“We wanted to give away 50 Easter baskets filled with toys and candy, and we had over 100,” she said. “Given a specific goal, they will respond to that goal – I should say over-respond to the goal.”
For Mother’s Day, the social concerns ministry organized gifts to give to mothers living at a women’s shelter. The gifts included hand cream, shampoo, and jewelry.
“They packed them in little bags and put a note in it for each mother,” Kundla said.
The ministry calls itself Samaritans Always Care and continues to develop new ideas to serve in their community.
“The list is so long I’m having trouble remembering what we’re working on,” she said. “I am so glad they came to us with that idea. We had random events, but this group has just caused the generosity of the parish to blossom.”
A diverse council
Kundla taught mathematics and was an engineering director before retiring. She finds that her expertise and gifts are essential contributions to St. Raphael’s parish pastoral council. The same is true for the others on the team.
Recently the council came together to review contractor bids for church repairs. They carefully ranked each one and analyzed the pros and cons.
“The council had an incredibly broad and deep base in how to do a review of contracts,” Kundla said. “I felt like I was back at work doing reviews of contractors. We did a fantastic analysis. I was so proud of the people there. It’s an incredibly rich team.”
The group also works closely with the parish finance council.
Over its 62 years, St. Raphael’s has had a large influx of people with diverse backgrounds and interests, all of whom make for a vibrant family, she said. The parish pastoral council was recently restructured to better represent this diversity.
“It’s become a point of pride that we have gone from a very tight-knit group to a tight-knit and diverse group,” Kundla said. “We have a broad base, and they each bring with them their excitement, but also their ideas about how we can become a better family. In addition, they bring with them their talents.”
There are currently 27 ministries. The council stays connected with all of them, offering help and support and relying on them for ideas to further the parish’s mission. The ministries focus on the role of Christ as Priest (worship), Prophet (teaching), and King (service).
During the pandemic, a parishioner from Nigeria built a portable vinyl protective barrier to visit shut-ins. Then, for Valentine’s Day, she delivered little boxes of sweets. She also set up a dance troupe and sent videos of the dancers to parishioners.
Pastoral planning
The council also advises the pastor, Father Jose Erlito Ebron, from a broad base of personal experience and helps him make critical decisions.
“He is very good at making decisions, but in a corporation, you need somebody to talk to, and we’ve been that somebody for Father Erlito when needed,” Kundla said. “One of the things I first noticed when I became more active in this parish was that we Catholics expect our priests to be CEOs and CFOs that know everything about how to run a corporation. But, in a corporation, you have a base of people who can give you help and can give you advice, and this council became more of that.”
Kundla said that when she and other council members attended Sister Donna’s workshop in 2019, one of the key takeaways was learning about the council’s role in supporting the pastor.
It is vital for pastors to hear what parishioners have to say and what the needs are in the parish, said Sister Donna.
“Councils are faith-filled communities who advise the pastor,” she said. “Any pastor should want to hear what people are talking about.”
Pastoral activity should focus on helping people encounter Christ, Sister Donna added.
“A personal encounter with Christ, especially in the sacraments, compels us to a greater participation in mission,” she writes in her presentation. “What we have been so wonderfully given, we pass on to those who do not yet know of it or who stand in need of renewal.”
In addition to supporting new activities, successful pastoral planning includes evaluating the effectiveness of existing parish ministries and recommending changes when needed. One of the things Sister Donna advises new councils to do is conduct surveys with parishioners. She uses simple questions like, “what do you like about the parish?” or “What would you like to see happen at the parish?”
She recalled that at one of the parishes she worked in, there were hundreds of responses about the quality of the music.
“So, they had to take an analytical look at how they handle liturgy,” she said.
Sometimes a parish will discover a whole demographic they weren’t even aware of. For example, St. Aloysius Parish in Caldwell started a Spanish-language Mass a few years ago after realizing there was a substantial Hispanic population in town.
“It’s not the kind of things that you think about necessarily,” Sister Donna said. “You might realize there is a growing population of younger people that requires the formation of a baptism ministry.”
Such a ministry would welcome parents from pregnancy and beyond to keep them connected to their parish, she said.
“We need to do that for people who get married in our parishes,” Sister Donna said. “How do we stay connected with them.”
She said that at one parish, thousands of apartment units were recently built next door. This presents a possible evangelization opportunity, she noted.
“When you look at these new apartments, you have to ask yourself, what do we do about that?” Sister Donna said. “Are there people there that are Catholic? How do we reach out to them? Are there people there who are unchurched? Can we leave them a card? So that’s part of what planning would do. And that’s what the pastoral council has to think about.”
Sister Donna said it is crucial right now for parishes to figure out how to welcome people back to Mass as the country comes out of the pandemic. Parishes may need to form welcome committees that utilize digital media and other tools to connect with their community.
“Creating relationships is a huge thing,” Sister Donna said, adding that ultimately, the goal is to develop a sense of mission for parish life centered around Jesus’ life-giving mission and the call to spread the Gospel.
Visit www.rcan.org/pastoralcouncil to learn more about parish pastoral councils, or call 973-497-4128. In addition, Sister Donna and her team recently created a series of related videos, which will soon be available at https://www.rcanonline.org.
Photo: Sr. Donna L. Ciangio, O.P., chancellor of the Archdiocese of Newark, displays some of the training materials she uses with parish pastoral councils. (Photo by Jai Agnish.)
