Your parish doesn't need more money

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When most faithful Catholics graduate from college and get their first well-paying job, they set up automated giving for their parish.

But is that really what your parish needs?

Sure, a few hundred a month helps keep the lights on. But what your parish really needs is something far more valuable: your time.

The Real Poverty in Parishes

American parishes aren’t poor in resources. Even small parishes usually have enough to keep the lights on and pay the bills.

What they’re poor in is people.

I saw this play out at a parish I worked at in Pittsburgh. A guy named Tom moved from Kansas to run a factory nearby. He started attending Mass with his wife every Sunday.

Six months went by. Nobody talked to him.

Finally, someone approached him after Mass and said, “You have a nice singing voice. You should join the choir.”

That was it. Six months at the same parish, and that was the first real conversation anyone had with him.

Tom eventually had to email the parish office asking how he could serve. Most people don’t do that. Most people don’t throw themselves at a community that hasn’t invited them in.

But Tom did. And he became an invaluable member of our parish. He led evangelization efforts. He ran the parish council. He and his wife started Bible studies.

We almost didn’t have him.

And our parish would have been worse off

Time Is More Valuable Than Money

Money is a renewable resource. You can always make another dollar. It doesn’t always feel that way, but you can.

Time is non-renewable.

You are an unrepeatable person with unrepeatable minutes. When you give your time to your parish, you’re giving something nobody else can give. Your experiences, your knowledge, your hopes, your fears—these shape the community in ways money never could.

Anybody can give a dollar. Only you can give yourself.

The problem is we’ve bought into this myopic view that money is our biggest constraint in the church. Father needs money to keep the lights on. The school needs money to stay open. We need money for renovations.

But that’s not our biggest constraint. Our biggest constraint is people.

If the Church really needed money, we would go get it. There’s money everywhere. You can meet with every parishioner and make the ask. You can find donors. You can run a capital campaign.

Time is the problem, not money.

Your Parish Actually Needs You

Your needs you to show up more than it needs another check.

It needs you at the same Mass every Sunday, talking to the same people, building relationships over months and years. It needs you to spot the person sitting alone and introduce yourself. It needs you to notice what’s missing—a dad’s group, a mom’s ministry, a young professionals Bible study—and start it.

My wife started a mom’s ministry at our parish. Tom started evangelization efforts. These things didn’t happen because the parish hired someone. They happened because parishioners committed their time.

This is how parishes become wealthy. Not in dollars, but in human capital.

If you can give large amounts of your time, great. But just like with money, small gifts of time are worth a lot.

Stay after Mass and introduce yourself to a person you’ve never met. Pick one ministry and commit to it for six months.

Sure, give money and support the parish, be generous.

But don’t stop there.

Your time is the gift your parish actually needs.

The money takes care of itself when people take care of each other.