OSV Newsweekly.<\/a><\/p>\nPope Francis has challenged us to find more effective ways to bring Christ to the world. So this year, \u00a0let\u2019s resolve \u2014 both as individuals and as a Church \u2014 to adopt a new approach to ministry that focuses on nourishing the seeds of faith instead of the current model that obsesses over why barren land is so \u2026 barren. Let me explain.<\/p>\n
The Church is rightly concerned about many problems. How can we retain our teens and young adults? How can we help couples live the Catholic vision of love and marriage? How can we do a better job of ministering to marginalized persons \u2014 especially the divorced and remarried, as well as LGBT persons? How can we build a Church of intentional disciples? But year after year, despite our best efforts, polls show that the Church is losing people at a constant rate. The more energy we put into our current approach to ministry, the worse the results are.<\/p>\n
What to do?<\/h3>\n
I believe the answer can be found in something Abraham Maslow once said about clinical psychology: namely, that its focus on disease led to a \u201csick psychology\u201d that could tell people what was wrong with them but could never give them a clear way out. His comments became the seeds of the \u201cpositive psychology\u201d movement founded in the late \u201990s by psychologist Martin Seligman. Positive psychology is the science of human flourishing. It does not ignore common psychological maladies like depression, anxiety and all the rest, but approaches them from a different angle. Instead of looking at what is \u201cbroken\u201d in the person, positive psychology studies what, exactly, leads people to experience happiness and fulfillment. It then teaches those skills to people who are struggling so that they can experience abundance in their lives as well.<\/p>\n
Despite early concerns that such an approach would be unrelatable or insensitive to people who were struggling with real problems, hundreds of studies over the last 20 years have shown that positive psychology has transformed countless lives with its solution-focused, growth-oriented, wisdom-based approach.<\/p>\n
Sick vs. healthy ministry<\/h3>\n
What does all this have to do with Church ministry? Everything. Since the late 1960s our ministry has been profoundly influenced by old-fashioned psychological models that focus on diagnosing problems rather than seeking solutions. We\u2019ve all fallen into asking problem-focused questions like, \u201cWhy don\u2019t young adults stay faithful?\u201d \u201cWhy don\u2019t couples use Natural Family Planning?\u201d \u201cWhy don\u2019t LGBT people, divorced people or others in \u2018irregular situations\u2019 feel welcome?\u201d These questions seem superficially helpful, but they merely grind down on the problem without leading us to any clear solutions.<\/p>\n
More contemporary liturgies? More traditional liturgies? Scrap NFP training? Require NFP training? Change doctrine? Toughen up on doctrine? Without any data to support a clear way forward, we merely react out of our personal biases, asserting \u201csolutions\u201d rooted less in either faith or facts than in secular, conservative or progressive ideologies.<\/p>\n
A better way<\/h3>\n
In the new year, let\u2019s adopt a \u201cpositive ministry\u201d approach that looks at what works instead of what doesn\u2019t. Let\u2019s find Catholics who have struggled with real human challenges in a way that led to deeper faith and greater personal integration. Let\u2019s ask them how they made the Faith work despite their challenging circumstances and teach those skills to those who are struggling.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s talk to Catholic couples who have faced real struggles with NFP, but have learned to approach those struggles in ways that led them to experience both a more faithful and a more intimate marriage and ask them, \u201cWhat worked?\u201d Let\u2019s talk to homosexual Catholics who are not living in denial but who have found a way to live their Catholicism in a way that has led to both deeper personal and spiritual integration and ask, \u201cWhat worked?\u201d Let\u2019s talk to teens and young adults who have faced personal doubts and social pressure bravely and honestly but still managed to remain in the Church all along and ask, \u201cWhat worked?\u201d Let\u2019s talk to divorced and remarried persons who have embraced the real challenges of living as brother and sister for a time but came out of the experience both stronger and more faithful and ask, \u201cWhat worked?\u201d<\/p>\n
Then, let\u2019s create models of ministry that...<\/a>(CONTINUE READING)<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My monthly column for OSV Newsweekly. Pope Francis has challenged us to find more effective ways to bring Christ to the world. So this year, \u00a0let\u2019s resolve \u2014 both as individuals and as a Church \u2014 to adopt a new approach to ministry that focuses on nourishing the seeds of faith instead of the current […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1437,"featured_media":3173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1237,1236,462],"class_list":["post-4109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church","tag-accompaniment","tag-pastoral-ministry","tag-positive-psychology"],"yoast_head":"\n
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