Walking with our new parish families

Liaisons assist each family on their journey to becoming one parish

Part coach, part consultant, maybe even part cheerleader.

Eight parish liaisons are supporting the Archdiocese of Seattle’s new parish families — officially formed July 1 — as they begin the work of becoming a single vibrant parish over the next three years.

Having a liaison to help navigate the Partners in the Gospel process is “invaluable,” said Father Bill Heric, now pastor of a family with four parishes — Assumption, St. Bridget, Our Lady of the Lake and St. Catherine of Siena — in northeast Seattle.

His family’s liaison, Steve Donaldson, has initiated conversations with key staff members and lay leaders in each parish, Father Heric said.

“I probably speak with him either by phone, by email or in person, or all of the above, probably every week,” Father Heric said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s indispensable in terms of bringing the four parish staffs and cultures together. I simply couldn’t do that by myself,” he added.

With so much change happening — parishes combining into families, clergy starting new assignments and parish staffs working through it all — the archdiocese hired the liaisons to help with the process.

“Their role is to really serve as a combination of coach [and] consultant for the pastor, the staff and the lay consultative bodies” in parish families under Partners in the Gospel, the archdiocese’s strategic planning initiative, said Tom Martin, chief information and strategy officer for the archdiocese’s Planning and Mission Effectiveness team. 

Combining gifts and talents

Partners in the Gospel, which has been planned for two years, “was designed to reorganize the structure of our parishes so that we can make more effective use of our resources — the people, the infrastructure, the finances, and more — to better achieve our Catholic mission,” Archbishop Paul D. Etienne said in a July 1 letter to the people of the archdiocese.

Parishes have been organized into 60 families, offering “a great opportunity to combine gifts and talents to better evangelize and share the joy of the Gospel with others,” the archbishop said in a July 1 news release.

“Imagine full Sunday Masses, people engaged in the sacraments, growing youth and young adult groups, and people excited about their Catholic faith. That’s what we’re trying to achieve with Partners in the Gospel,” Archbishop Etienne added.

To help parishes as they work toward that vision, the archdiocese sought liaisons with good listening and people skills who are well-founded in their faith, Martin said. Many of the liaisons have experience working in parishes; some have also worked at the diocesan level, he added. Each liaison is responsible for assisting several parish families within specific geographic areas of the archdiocese.

“I’m here to accompany; sometimes I’m a bridge to resources,” said Tom East, the liaison for the South King region, which encompasses eight parish families with 16 locations, including two in Pierce County. East, most recently pastoral assistant for initiation, grief and marriage ministries at St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Tacoma, is drawing on his experiences in various church ministries over four decades.

The liaisons will help parish families navigate how to approach prayer and worship, evangelization, administration, governance and more in their new configuration — accounting for the gifts and needs of all communities within the family.

It’s sure to be a complex journey.

“There’s prayer and patience and resources and a little bit of duct tape in these processes,” East said.

Meeting each family’s needs

East and other liaisons began working with parishes last spring. Much of the early months was focused on logistics, such as helping the parish families figure out priest housing or any necessary changes to Mass times. Meetings with staff members gave them a chance to learn more about each parish and begin building relationships.

Liaison Gina DePalma has found staff members in her parish families “very, very receptive to the idea of liaisons” — they see having an “ally” and a “sounding board” as a positive part of the Partners process, she said.

DePalma, who was pastoral assistant for faith formation at Church of the Assumption Parish in Bellingham for 13 years, is working with six parish families that encompass 28 locations in Whatcom, Skagit, San Juan and Island counties and the northern part of Snohomish County.

She spent several days in person and online assisting a team of clergy, staff and volunteers from an entire parish family as they worked to come up with “a sane and convenient transportation plan” for priests traveling to the churches on Orcas and Lopez islands. The priest will fly via local carrier to the islands, providing a more reliable and workable weekend Mass schedule. A list of parishioners who are boaters and pilots was compiled for possible emergencies. “Everyone is pleased with the result,” DePalma said.

Although there may be some commonalities in the work of a parish liaison, it isn’t one size fits all.

“Every liaison’s job is going to be very unique to their region and unique to their families and the needs of their families,” said Frances Farrell, liaison for the southern region, which includes six parish families with 24 locations in Clark, Lewis, Cowlitz, Pacific, Skamania and Wahkiakum counties.

Two of her parish families don’t have a lot of paid staff, Farrell said, so she plans to be “very present to them, really supporting the volunteers who take on those roles as staff, making sure they have the resources they need.” She will also support pastors “who work in those really unique situations.”

Farrell comes to her liaison role with 25 years of ministry experience — 13 years at the diocesan level and 12 years in parish ministry, including the last 10-plus years at St. Joseph Parish in Vancouver.

It was hard to give up parish ministry, Farrell said, but the more she thought and prayed about the parish liaison role, she saw it as a way of combining her ministry experiences and being part of something important.

“I felt this pull to be of service to this area,” she said, bringing a tangible presence of the archdiocese to parish families that are geographically distant from Seattle. 

“I really believe in what we’re doing” with Partners in the Gospel, Farrell added, noting the lack of priests and the challenging schedules they have had to work. And during her years of parish ministry, “I’ve seen how lots of times mission and evangelization … probably don’t get the attention and the focus and the thought that they should because people are spread so thin.”

Farrell said she envisions helping parish families find creative ways to do things that fit their communities and their staffing models.

“Pastoral staff already have so much work to do” and this new layer of work “could be really overwhelming for them,” Farrell said. “I really want to make this as easy [for them] as I can.” 

Everyone has a role in the church’s mission

As Archbishop Etienne often reminds local Catholics, all the baptized share responsibility for the church’s mission. So working to revitalize parish life means expanding the number of people actively engaged in parishes and their decision-making processes, he said in his letter.

Liaisons are committed to helping parishioners in their parish families more fully live their baptismal call. 

“I think there’s a lot of people who are excited at the prospect of what this could be,” DePalma said. “We just have to get out of our way and think outside the box a little bit … of what church could be.”

“As more and more people hear the archbishop speak about co-responsibility,” she added, parishioners are realizing their role is important and they have a lot to offer.

Many times, East said, parishioners don’t know how to bring their gifts to the church. He hopes the Partners process will “create a different way for people to see themselves as a member of the parish.”

He also hopes the parish family process will result in a “happy, joyful, sustainable priesthood.” Some priests “are just running around like crazy. They are being asked to do a lot of things that other people could pick up and do,” East said.

Father Heric said the parish family structure will elevate the role of lay people, who should have “a primary ownership and responsibility” in the life of the church, with “compassionate and dedicated priests” to serve them.

Bringing the four northeast Seattle parishes together could make them “stronger and more dynamic,” Father Heric said. And although the number of Masses has been reduced, “hopefully we’ll f ill them and the music will be beautiful and the participation of people will be substantial and people will leave Mass with the sense of being ambassadors of Christ” to the community, he said.

To learn more, visit the Partners in the Gospel website.

This article appeared in the August/September 2024 issue of Northwest Catholic magazine. Read the rest of the issue here.