Highly Engaged Parishes

[Terrence Seamon]

Are any of you involved with engagement at your place of worship?

I've been asked by my pastor to work with him, his staff and other lay leaders on a parish-wide engagement initiative. To help get everyone's thinking juices flowing, we are all reading a book called Growing An Engaged Church by Albert L. Winseman, published by Gallup Press.

I like Winseman's subtitle: How to stop "Doing Church" and start Being the church again

It's intriguing to me. I've been wrestling with the doing vs being issue my whole life. I remember a professor of mine from college saying to me, "That's a difference between us, Terry. You are more concerned about being, while I focus on doing."

As my journey of faith has rolled on, I don't think it's an either/or proposition. As St. James famously said, You can't have real faith without works.

Here is what James wrote: "What good is it if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well," but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.." (James 2: 14-17)

If we want to change this place for the better, Doing and Being are both required.

I'll post an update on this project once it gets going.

Terry