The Value of Welcoming, Even When It's Hard

We are all still a work in progress: by our baptism and growing faith, we show glimmers of the divine life that is within us, but we are not yet fully transformed. This can be frustrating at times, when like St. Paul, we wonder why we don't always act the way we want to. It can also be freeing to recognize that God’s not finished with me yet, and our shortcomings are compensated for when we call upon his mercy and grace.

Yet most Catholic parishes operate from a set of expectations that people must first behave and believe a certain way before you can really belong to the church community. This “ Behave-Believe-Belong” approach worked well for many people in older generations where young people embraced the values and behaviors of their elders. But different generations operate from different default mindsets, and a lot of water has passed under the bridge in the past few decades. If we want our parishes to draw more people from “Generation X” (like me) and “Millennials” (in their 20s and early 30s), we need to understand how these generations tend to think. For example, these younger generations generally value integrity more than conformity, so they are more likely to participate in a community of faith if they quickly feel like they belong, then come to believe personally, and then behave according to their new personal beliefs. Embracing these “ Belong-Believe-Behave” generations in a spirit of Christian hospitality may require additional patience and tolerance while newcomers more gradually grow in belief and practice, but we can certainly walk with these sisters and brothers along the way. This approach is very consistent with the ministry modeled for us by Jesus, who reaches out to people of all ages and generations. He healed people & shared meals with them first before expecting any changes in their behavior, which they often embraced as a result of their encounter with him.

In the Values section of our new Plainville-Wrentham Collaborative Plan, one of those listed is already a strength of our parishes: both the St. Martha and St. Mary communities do well at making people feel welcome when they worship with us. Yet our desire to grow our parishes challenges us to take the next step toward helping them to want to belong. How can we build on our value of welcome in various forms of hospitality? How can we share the other values put forth in our PWC Plan? See the Values section on page 6 of this bulletin, or go to PWC.church to read the whole plan. May the Holy Spirit strengthen us to help others feel they “belong” in our parish families as much as we do. Email us at WritingTeam@pwc.church with your comments and ideas about the plan.