It's not always going to cost money to turn a parish into a more welcoming parish. But it does take a willingness to change a lot of assumptions.

It all begins with acknowledging that we have some very profound challenges, and that we don't have easy answers at hand, things that we know will solve the problems. If people embrace those two facts, then the next steps are a little easier to fall into place.

To me the church's problem would be a hundred times worse if you felt everyone has written the church off, they don't want to know, there just aren't people to turn to. But it's exactly the opposite: there are such people. We have to find a way in our organizational life to get out of their way, clear the path to find more of these people, and empower them.

In the corporate world you get a report card every quarter and have to talk about it, whereas the church can drip, drip through bad trends for decades and decades.

It's not always going to cost money to turn a parish into a more welcoming parish. But it does take a willingness to change a lot of assumptions.

One question I often ask is why the church doesn't set aside funds specifically to seed new ideas. A lot of our money tends to go into existing, literally physical buildings, or existing parishes, programs, and schools, and we have nothing that is very explicitly dedicated toward new ventures of all kinds that would help parishes, help education, help catechesis.

We need to become a more welcoming church, one that reaches out more to those who have walked away or who aren't very interested to begin with.