Brothers and sisters in Christ,
A year from now, when we look back on 2025, what will we want to say about St. Anne and what we have accomplished?
In 2005, Robert Rivers wrote, “From Maintenance to Mission: Evangelization and the Revitalization of the Parish.” Rivers and a host of others since, have argued that a parish in “maintenance mode” is, in fact, a dying church. To be sure, maintenance is easier. The church staff simply pulls out the prior year calendar and copies all the events into the next year. No new events are planned. No changes are made to any event already scheduled. One year looks just like the next.
A church in maintenance mode has lots of reasons for doing this. “We don’t have enough volunteers (or staff, or money, or time) to add anything,” they say. In response to a new idea they’ll respond, “That will never work here” or “We tried that 20 years ago” or “No one will come.”
Yes, it is easy to be in maintenance mode. Conversely, it is harder and even scary to be in mission mode. An idea might not turn out well. There might be criticism.
The recently concluded Synod on Synodality drew criticism for wanting to push out of maintenance mode. Some didn’t like it. They wanted everything in the Church to stay the same. At the Synod’s concluding Mass this past October, Pope Francis said in his homily that the church cannot risk becoming “static” but must continue as a “missionary church that walks with her Lord through the streets of the world.” The church must listen to men and women “who wish to discover the joy of the Gospel,” he said, but it also must listen to “those who have turned away” from faith and to “the silent cry of those who are indifferent,” as well as the poor, marginalized and desperate.
“We do not need a sedentary and defeatist church,” the Pope said, “but a church that hears the cry of the world and — I want to say it, maybe someone will be scandalized — a church that gets its hands dirty to serve the Lord.”
As I read the gospels, Jesus was never in maintenance mode. He never taught his disciples (or us) to adopt that attitude. He calls us to be in mission.
What will we say about 2025 when we arrive at January 2026? I hope we’ll talk about surprises and wonder. I hope we’ll tell stories of how God worked in our lives and in the lives of those in our area. I hope we’ll say, “We followed the Lord to places we never thought possible.”
