How to influence your pastor

"yes? no? maybe" by Visionello | Flickr

5 thoughts on “How to influence your pastor”

  1. Thank you for these very practical suggestions.

    We are blessed in our parish to have a pastor whose primary concern is the spiritual growth of his people. RCIA is a high priority for him as are other “programmes” of spiritual growth such as scripture study, Alpha for Catholics, etc. When we approached him with the year round concept and he realized that inquirers would be in RCIA for two years in many cases, he was concerned that people would find that too difficult but he gave us the freedom to try it. Now he is amazed and grateful to God that this has been embraced by every inquirer because he is witnessing the results of a greater commitment on the part of those involved.

    Pastors have many balls to juggle and your suggestions are excellent; however, I would add that, above all, let us pray for our pastors.

  2. Perseverance is a wonderful thing! I once worked with a pastor who was very timid about inviting the Assembly to extend their hands in prayer toward the catechumens during the Scrutinies. The first year I explained my experience in previous parishes and the effect it had on parishioners’ ‘ownership’ of the catechumens. He said no. The next year I asked again, reminding him of the positive experience the sponsors and team had extending their hands in prayer during our RCIA catechetical sessions. He said no again. The third year I asked again and, before I had a chance to give him a reason, he said to me, “You’re going to keep asking me until I give in, aren’t you?” – to which I replied, “Yes, I am.” That year he explained the meaning of the gesture to the Assembly with great enthusiasm, and the power in the rite was astounding!

  3. What a blessing this article was to me. i have been struggling with my Pastor’s seemingly closed mind to all things and all things new. i could not figure out how to connect with him and how to not let it interfere with my association with him. This article gave me some tools outside of my comfort zone that i was not using. Thank you so much for the great information and the wonderful subject as now I know that i am not the only one to suffer this hard-headed illness (that i have myself) ????

  4. The ideas are wonderful if the pastor will talk to you. Instead he acted like Moses presenting us with stone tablets written from on high and no discussion was allowed for to question Father was to question God. He said he would run Mystagogia but never showed up at any of the sessions. After that no one on the team ever heard from him again. He didn’t even have the common courtesy to say that he decided to take the program in a new direction and that the team’s services were no longer required nor even to thank the team for their past contributions to the parish. We were just shutout. Needless to say none of the former team members belong to his parish anymore and the RCIA program there has fallen completely apart.

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