CENTER SECTION: PASTORAL PLANNING AND COUNCILS
Prince of Peace Cluster Develops Synergy in Northeast Iowa

by Jeffry Odell Korgen

Many parish pastoral council members greet diocesan reorganization efforts with some caution and concern, particularly when they fear the closing of their own parish (“Do I stay on the pastoral council? Do I handcuff myself to a pew?”). From the Archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa, parish and cluster council chair Wayne Frost explained how six parishes became three clustered parishes shepherded by one pastor, somehow earning the name “Prince of Peace” through the harmonious operation of their four pastoral councils.

Frost, the chair of St. Mary’s Parish Pastoral Council in Ackley and also the chair of the Prince of Peace Cluster Pastoral Council, says that the recent closing of three parishes and the clustering of the remaining parishes, all 10-20 miles apart in northeast Iowa, was hard on parishioners.

“We’d all like to go back and have our own parish priest,” he said. “It’s challenging to find a common direction, and three parishes closed to make this happen.” The consequences of sharing a priest included reducing Masses to once a weekend in each remaining parish and the sense of grief and loss that accompanied the three closings.

The three clustered parishes had to grapple with the fallout of the closings and mergers. The pastoral councils often became the locus of these conversations. Frost appropriated the metaphor of the “blended family,” introduced by Charles Zech and Robert Miller in their recent book Listening to the People of God (Paulist, 2008). Zech and Miller suggest that the challenges that blended families must face are analogous to the challenges that “blended parishes” are up against.

But parishioners worked beyond their grief and confusion about new roles, fueled by a belief in the church and a sense that their faith transcended any loyalty to a particular ecclesial structure. A previous experience of “linking” (a lesser form of clustering) among some of the parishes provided a positive history to build upon. The pastoral councils for each of the three parishes now meet bi-monthly and the cluster council meets on the alternate months. Once members properly processed their feelings about the closings and clusterings, they got to the business of finding ways for the parishes to work together.

The result? More people, more programs, more volunteer leaders. Frost noted that the three parishes together bring resources to the table, both human and financial, that simply were not present when they operated separately.

Because of greater economies of scale, overall expenses are now lower. Currently, lay staff are separate for each parish, but Frost foresees a future in which the parishes may lower expenses and develop further synergies by sharing staff. The savings are welcome, but Frost sees the greatest gift as the conversations that occur among the members of the cluster council. Recently, the cluster council approved budgets for its joint Board of Education, paving a way for one of the parishes to hire a director of religious education. Each parish paid into the cluster account, so all have a stake in the hiring, but the parish involved makes the hiring decision. Such creative management decisions demonstrate how the principle of subsidiarity operates among healthy parish clusters and their pastoral councils.

Jeffry Odell Korgen is executive director, Department of Planning, for the diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey.