The Diocese of Honolulu has created a guide to help pastors and parish leadership measure how well they’re doing according to “best practice benchmarks.”
The diocese will also use the guide to do annual parish assessments and provide help as needed.
A task force made up of Presbyteral Council members (priests who advise Bishop Larry Silva) and lay Catholics put together the “Healthy Parish Benchmarks” based on factors they researched as causing a parish to decline.
Those factors might be changing parish demographics, poor management or leadership, low stewardship or other issues.
The minimum characteristics for a healthy parish as identified by the benchmarks are:
- Active clergy communication and engagement with parishioners and staff that leads to the entire faith community participating in parish life.
- Regular and ongoing leadership formation of clergy and laity to create a vibrant faith community.
- Effective management of people, facilities and funds to support the parish vision as articulated and communicated by the parish pastoral council.
- Parishes meeting their financial obligations and commitments without regular infusions from the diocese.
- Parishes actively engaging with the larger civic community to the extent that a parish would be missed by the community if it disappeared.
The 10 areas of management the guide highlights are:
- Pastoral council
- Parish financial council
- Parish stewardship effort
- Competent lay employee compensation
- Repair, maintenance and renovation
- Schools
- Parish budget
- Reporting of parish financial condition
- Bills are paid when due
- Sunday giving
To read the entire guide go to catholichawaii.org/resource-center/healthyparish/.