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May 24, 2021
Last week, we began our discussion of the Parish Assembly presentation by reviewing your responses to our Spring Newsletter & Survey, in which you told us that you felt that owning and maintaining six church sites for our parish was not sustainable, and recommending that we move forward with fewer buildings; many of you recommended that one building in Penn Hills and one building in Monroeville would be sufficient for ministry and evangelization moving forward. (If you’d like to watch the Parish Assembly presentation in its entirety, it’s available for viewing at our website (www.cdsmph.org). You also have the opportunity to participate in the Q&A session by clicking the blue Q&A button on the Parish Assembly page.)
In addition to the information you provided to us in the parish survey, our parish councils made an additional request: that we take a look at not only financial information, but also information about people – over the past decade, how many people have been coming to Masses in our churches and whether (and to what extent) our parish is shrinking or growing. In order to answer these questions, we first had to decide what timeframe to include in our analysis. We wanted a period of time that was long enough to provide a good understanding of the trends for our parish. We also wanted it to be representative – we wanted to include all six of our church buildings. In addition, it didn’t seem appropriate to include data from 2020, since COVID affected participation in parish life so profoundly for many people. So, we decided to start with 2011, since St Michael became part of NAM Parish in that year, and we concluded with the end of 2019, right before the start of the pandemic.
In order to gauge Mass attendance, we used the numbers from the annual “October count” – each year, every parish in the diocese of Pittsburgh counts the numbers of people who attend Masses in October, and the diocese uses these numbers as representative of parish Mass attendance. In order to understand our parish’s growth rate, we used a standard measure: a comparison of the number of baptisms and of deaths in the parish.
We found that there’s been a dramatic decrease in Mass attendance at our six church buildings over the past decade – as compared to 2011, almost half of those who attended Mass at our parishes no longer celebrate liturgy with us! In 2019, when we gathered for parish assemblies to discuss the creation of Christ the Divine Shepherd Parish, we pointed out that 3000 people each weekend attended our Masses in 2018. In 2019, that number continued to decline.
This figure of “3000 Mass attendees per weekend” is an important indicator for us: early on, we knew that whatever proposal we decided upon, it should allow for at least 10% more capacity than the 2018 attendance of 3000 people per weekend. This will provide for sufficient capacity now, and additional capacity for growth in the future.
Looking at this data, we now realized that our attendance is only half of what it had been merely a decade ago. But what about our parish’s membership? Was it possible that attendance was declining, but membership (and therefore, financial stewardship) was remaining strong?
In this graph, the further downward the line the moves into the green area, the faster that parish population is growing. The further upward the line moves in the red area, the faster that our parish population is shrinking. Looking at the graph, we see that we’ve been shrinking in size throughout the past decade. At present, for every person we baptize, 3-4 parishioners pass away.
Together, these two measures tell us that we’ve been in significant decline in terms of members and activity over the past decade. Our needs have been changing over the past ten years, and our ability to generate the resources necessary to meet our needs has been eroding significantly as well. In order to understand what our capabilities are and what challenges face us, we formed a “Task Force” last October. The Task Force was comprised of five current, active members of CDS – one from each of our legacy parishes. Each of the members of this team brought not only their love of our faith and of our parish, but also their professional skills and experiences as well (construction, finance, real estate, non-profit work & volunteering). We asked them to rate each of the twenty buildings that our parish owns, using a standard format developed by the diocese for use in all parishes in the diocese of Pittsburgh.
In next week's update, we’ll discuss the Task Force’s efforts and the results of their study.
Please continue to keep Christ the Divine Shepherd Parish and our parish family in your prayers!
