Picture a mosaic consisting of multiple parts, or a sun casting rays of light in all directions, or a thriving corner business.
A call to envision such images might have felt strange to the more than 150 Catholic parish leaders who gathered recently for a planning meeting at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, but they loom large for the city’s faithful in the near future.
Top officials of the Archdiocese of Baltimore last week told the assembly of priests, brothers, parishioners and others at the seminary that a mosaic with its complementary parts, a radiating sun, and a busy storefront enterprise could serve as prototypes for how Catholic parishes will be restructured as part of its campaign to revolutionize how it operates in the city.
The multiyear initiative, called “Seek the City to Come,” aims to determine how the nation’s oldest diocese can use its resources more efficiently at a time when church attendance remains perilously down in the city, revenue has diminished accordingly, many older buildings have fallen into disrepair, and the effects of a worldwide, national and local sex-abuse scandal continue to reverberate.
Organizers say they expect final recommendations for the reset to be presented to Archbishop William E. Lori for his consideration by mid-April and the process to be complete sometime in May.
Bishop Bruce A. Lewandowski, urban vicar for the archdiocese and a co-leader of the project, reminded the men and women who packed a St. Mary’s meeting room Feb. 12 that hewing to familiar methods — including the notion that Baltimore’s parishes should function just as they did when times were better generations ago — is not sustainable, and radical, fresh ideas are needed.
“We are looking to read the signs of the times,” he said, in a pragmatic yet hopeful tone. “We’re opening ourselves to the gifts and powers of the Holy Spirit, and asking the spirit to guide and lead us forward to a church that will be renewed, refreshed and revived and growing.”
In the “mosaic” model, Lewandowski and others explained, parishes distributed across the city would offer Mass and house multiple ministries under their roofs.
The “radiating parish” plan would see significantly fewer core parishes than the 57 the archdiocese maintains in or close to the city today, but each would serve as a hub for several “rays” — smaller sites focused on specific ministries that would spread outward into their surrounding communities.
A “Catholic commons” model, they added, would include the sort of intimate, street-level operations that have become increasingly popular in various Christian groups across the U.S. and beyond, particularly among urban evangelicals with families. Such sites are often located in commercial centers or share space with an individual business.
Each could serve as an alternative to, or replacement for, the parish model that emerged in Baltimore generations ago and remains in place. That model generally features churches that took root in distinct geographical areas, often locations populated by Catholic immigrants of similar national or ethnic backgrounds. Each church was designed to offer most of Catholicism’s cradle-to-grave sacraments while also providing Catholic education and adult fellowship.
Once the residents of those communities began to prosper, though, many moved to the suburbs. That left their former neighborhoods less populated, or otherwise changed, and rendered the Catholic landscape more complex, less wedded to geographical attachment, and thus less efficient in delivering services. And by the time the archdiocese announced the Seek the City initiative in the fall of 2022, the churches built to seat 25,000 on Sunday in the city hosted about 2,000.
Lewandowski, Seek the City Director Geri Royale Byrd and other facilitators told attendees at the workshop that the three models — generated by church leaders and parishioners during an earlier stage — were meant to be seen as jumping-off points for discussion.
“These specific parish types are there really just to spark our imagination, our creativity,” said Byrd, the director of community affairs for the archdiocese. “They help us to see what’s possible and what we can do, how we can reimagine.”
Organizers then broke the crowd into groups by region, with individuals from parishes in the northern, southern, western, eastern and central portions of the archdiocese’s city footprint gathering at tables to assess how the models, hybrids thereof, or other ideas might or might not work in their parts of Baltimore.
Byrd, Lewandowski and facilitators from Ayers Saint Gross, a design and planning firm whose business includes helping large institutions to reorganize, collected notes from the conversations. They will present the results to church leaders and parishioners as part of the project’s monthlong final phase.
Byrd, Lori and others have sought to emphasize from the beginning of the initiative that they intend to avoid the sort of top-down decision-making process the archdiocese used during previous, less ambitious reorganizational efforts, some of which closed and consolidated parishes. Lewandowski also addressed the worries of some Catholics that Seek the City might be just another effort to shut down parishes or that their own church will close, saying it’s too early to forecast any such moves.
In an initial, “listening” phase of the project, organizers spent months holding discussions with Catholics in each city parish to seek input on what people viewed as their parishes’ strengths, what ministries they saw as most important, and what a renewed city church might emphasize. A second, “visioning” phase incorporated data on the demographics of Catholic Baltimore provided by Ayers Saint Gross and invited parishioners to react to that feedback at citywide workshops.
The meeting last week marked the onset of a final, “discerning” phase in which leaders and parishioners are developing, debating and settling on recommendations they will submit to Lori. Lewandowski and Byrd repeatedly told the crowd that the ideas and feedback they shared would help drive that determinative process as the initiative moves toward completion.
“We’ve diverged from the processes that other dioceses have used in that we are actually working together with you to create the recommendations that will go to the archbishop,” Lewandowski said. “You’re the ones doing the work.”
As they broke into groups, parish leaders seemed engaged and hopeful as they responded to the question organizers asked them to consider: How do you envision these models, or others, working to advance the Gospel and humanitarian ministry within your region?
The complexity of trying to remake church operations on such a sweeping scale soon became apparent. Participants raised a range of concerns: How could the models preserve a sense of the church’s rich history? How could each be used to serve elderly Catholics, attract families, foster hope and excitement, bolster Hispanic and Black Catholic ministries, connect with people “where they are?”
What, meanwhile, would become of some of the archdiocese’s older, expensive-to-maintain buildings? Is leadership simply following fads? How much construction would be needed, and who would pay? Speakers from most groups said they supported the “radiating parish” and “Catholic commons” models or some combination thereof, while fewer leaned toward the more conservative “mosaic” plan.
Patrick Woods, a deacon at St. Pius X in Towson, said he could envision the radiating model benefiting his parish, which is part of a pastorate with St. Mary of the Assumption a mile and a half to the south on York Road in Baltimore City.
He mentioned the empty storefronts along the York Road corridor and said the model could create smaller, safer spaces where potential believers might feel comfortable entering.
“As long as you’re authentic when you’re there, they’re going to buy into that, where they’re not going to buy into the giant church building with the ‘You come to me’ idea,” he said.
As the four-hour meeting drew to a close, Lori thanked the team leaders for their work, the crowd applauded, and Lewandowski alluded, half-jokingly, to the tough decisions that lie ahead.
“Let’s try that again in two months,” he said.
