The American Church needs to think in decades

Many Catholics have tried to change their parishes and failed.

The burnout and frustration are legitimate—years of volunteering, organizing, pleading with pastors, with nothing to show for it.

But “it didn’t work for me” is not the same as “it’s impossible.”

The problem is not that our Church or our parishes are beyond saving.

The problem is we’ve forgotten how Catholics are supposed to think about time.

There’s a saying that keeps coming up when I talk to burned-out parishioners: “The Catholic Church thinks in centuries.” The Church is the oldest institution on the planet, the only one remaining from antiquity.

The Church doesn’t think year-to-year. It thinks in generations. It always has.

The Cologne Cathedral

The Cologne Cathedral in Germany was the tallest building in the world when it was completed. It was built to house the relics of the Three Magi and took 632 years to finish. They laid the foundation stone in 1248. When the Reformation happened, construction halted. It wasn’t finished until 1880.

And yet, generation after generation, people kept the vision alive. When construction finally resumed in the 1800s, the builders followed the original medieval plans.

Many parishes today are like that cathedral mid-construction. A cultural revolution took hold and halted their growth. The large building stands half-empty as a reminder of what could have been.

But the work can continue. You can find the original plans and take up the labor again.

Here’s where I lose some people.

We’ve absorbed a modern assumption that suffering automatically means we need to remove ourselves from the situation. If it’s hard, if it hurts, if progress is slow, that must be a sign to leave.

And sometimes it is. I’ve left parish jobs when it was time.

But not all hardship means you must leave.

Sometimes Christ puts us in difficult situations to make those situations better. Sometimes, He puts us there to make us better.

“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24, DRA)

What my grandfather gave my children

My grandfather died in 2021.

He was active at my parish and instrumental in building up our evangelization efforts for lapsed Catholics. This year, a woman came up to me and told me she remembered him. She said he helped her rediscover her faith and encouraged her to go on to evangelize others.

My grandfather never saw that particular fruit of his labor. But we do. My children—whom he never met—get to enjoy the parish he helped build.

That’s how this works.

The work we do at our parishes will take a long time, will be difficult, and will involve suffering. It will take generations of building together to recover what we lost. This is not new.

St. Paul said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” One person sows, another reaps. You might be the sower. You might never harvest anything yourself. But what a harvest that reaper is going to have because of your labor.

Think in decades

The American Church is much younger than the Cologne Cathedral. We might not be ready to think in centuries, but we are ready to think in decades. We are capable of seeing a longer game: temporary losses for greater wins in the future.

We can choose to see parish closures and shrinking numbers as painful but temporary. We can choose to trust that God is working to do something greater in the end.

The people who started the Cologne Cathedral never saw it finished. The architect who drew the original plans never saw them completed. The workers who laid the foundation never saw the towers rise. Their names are forgotten. But the people who saw it finished saw the tallest building in the world.

Now we see their work. We walk through the doors they framed and worship Christ under the roof they raised.

Someone built the parish where you worship. You probably don’t remember their names, but you’re blessed by their labor.

If your ancestors thought in the short term, avoiding pain and hard work, you might not be blessed with the gifts you’ve been given.

Now it’s your turn.

Now is your turn to build your parish for the betterment of your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

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I want to help you do that.

I wrote a manual to help the average Catholic with zero ministry experience save their parish.

It releases on February 2.

Join the waitlist to get the first chapter free and the ebook for $0.99 on launch day.