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The Mission Alignment Process: Challenges and Opportunities
The Mission Alignment Process (MAP), initiated five years ago, was designed to foster vibrant parishes by strategically aligning the valuable resources of the diocese. The goal is clear: to “Know Christ better and to make Him better known,” ensuring that every decision serves the mission of the Church. On April 28, I announced a significant new phase in MAP, which involves closing 13 worship sites: 12 parishes and one pastoral…
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Aligning our reality with our mission
I write to you today regarding the next phase of MAP and the important role each one of us must play in aligning our operations with our sacred mission. With God’s help and with the resilience of our common faith, we press on in making our parishes places where people encounter Christ in the celebration of the Sunday liturgy, in our living the corporal and spiritual works of mercy and in our witness as missionary disciples.
What does it mean to align with mission?
The following paragraphs from Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel), an apostolic exhortation published by Pope Francis, encapsulates well the spirit of our Mission Alignment Process:
"I dream of a 'missionary option,' that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with himself...
"... The parish is the presence of the Church in a given territory, an environment for hearing God’s word, for growth in the Christian life, for dialogue, proclamation, charitable outreach, worship and celebration. ... We must admit, though, that the call to review and renew our parishes has not yet sufficed to bring them nearer to people, to make them environments of living communion and participation, and to make them completely mission-oriented." (No. 27, 28)
Mission Alignment Process Realigning resources for mission
The MAP (Mission Alignment Process) began in 2021 to address a growing gap between the mission of the Church and the operational realities of our parishes. The challenges of declining participation in parish life - sacramentally, financially and ministerially - are not unique to the Diocese of Oakland. Dioceses throughout the United States are impacted with similar challenges.
Read the reports below to learn about the implementation of the Mission Alignment Process.