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I pray this note finds you happy, healthy, and holy. This month, I would like to talk about the “Growing Disciples” Pastoral Planning process the Diocese of Peoria is currently going through. The diocese has hired a company, Catholic Leadership Institute, to guide them through this process. To be frank, after having the program explained to me last fall, my initial thoughts were, “Call this process what it really is - a way to decrease the number of churches in order to align with the declining number of priests and people attending Mass.” Like many others, our diocese needs to go through this process of decreasing the number of functioning parishes. However, I see “Growing Disciples” much differently today because beyond all the specifics of this process I can now see the Holy Spirit working in our diocese and through our bishop! So what brought about this change? Why did I lose the cynical mindset and embrace this hopeful one? Well, through God’s grace of course, and reading a book that our bishop asked his priests to read, From Christendom to Apostolic Mission. And though I want all of you to read this book for yourselves, I will briefly explain in my own words something I took away from it.
Let me introduce you to a fictitious man named John. John is on fire for God and absolutely loves the Catholic Church. In fact, he is a very talented artist painting beautiful images of Jesus and the saints and writing songs about God. It’s all he wants to talk about and many people are falling in love with Jesus and his Church because of how God is working in John’s life. However, over the years John has slowly lost his love for the faith and though he is still writing songs and painting, they are now only about secular matters. As you can imagine, God is going to send the Holy Spirit so that he can capture the heart of John once again.
John is really an analogy for our culture. The book would refer to the time in our culture when everything was centered on the faith as a time of “Christendom”. However, our culture, like John, has fallen away from the faith and become more focused on secular matters. When God sends the Holy Spirit to win back the culture, that is what is referred to as a time of “Apostolic Mission”.
I am more convinced than ever that the Holy Spirit is working in the church, particularly through this process. “Growing Disciples” shares with us Bishop Lou’s vision for a diocese filled with faithful parishioners and vibrant parishes and gives us a roadmap to get there. I strongly encourage you to read the aforementioned book and dive with me into all things “Growing Disciples” so that we can be a part of God capturing the heart of culture once again.
In Christ,
Fr. Schultz
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