FAQs

A primary goal of this project is that every bishop and diocese know and care for their priests/parish directors better.  Care and support can best be provided when those who are providing it have a good sense of the overall person.  CLI and your archdiocese hope that you will enter into this project that way.  Additionally, your archdiocese committed to have the priests/parish directors participate.  Finally, your absence would create a gap in another primary goal of the effort, which is to have a complete snapshot of the priests/parish directors to better inform assignments and support.

All active diocesan priests/parish directors participate.  This includes any active diocesan priests serving outside of the archdiocese at the time of the project.  Additionally, all extern priests serving in parish ministry, as well as any religious priests serving in parish ministry can and should participate. Senior priests can determine if they wish to participate.

An individualized growth plan is a tool for ministerial and personal development.  The individual priest/parish director identifies objectives for growth that are important to this leader and align with the feedback received from other perspectives.  The plan further outlines the strategies and experiences that would best support the successful fulfillment of those learning objectives.  These strategies might include certification or graduate studies, leadership experiences or roles, ongoing support resources like executive coaching.

Per the expectations of the grant, the priests/parish directors should share their individualized growth plan with the Vicar for Clergy and the coach-mentor that supports them.  Beyond that, we would encourage sharing the plan with leadership in your parish/assignment so they can be aware of your learning goals as well as family and friends. 

Crafting an excellent growth plan and exploring data can be challenging.  In order to support you through this process, the project also includes the recruitment, training, and ongoing support of coach-mentors within your archdiocese.  These are clergy and lay leaders who have volunteered to provide one on one or small group support in helping priests/parish directors craft growth plans and helping parishes discern their action plans.

Coach-mentors will be assigned to a deanery/vicariate.  The pool of available coach-mentors will try to average a 5:1 ratio of the number of priests/parish directors for each coach-mentor.

Awesome!  You should continue to work with that person.  We would recommend that that person participate in the training and support opportunities provided to coach-mentors so they can have context and support in supporting you.

Sometimes this happens.    You can request a new coach-mentor and all effort will be made to match you with a compatible coach-mentor.  Simply connect with the “Coach Lead” designated in your archdiocese.  You may also have an existing resource, and you may work with that individual for this purpose.

No. This project does not require or expect the immediate transfer of priests/parish directors.  The hope is that upon the time when the archdiocese (or the priest/parish director) may be exploring new assignments, all parties will have greater awareness and more helpful tools to assist the process.

The information for each of your individual parishes will be recorded as reflected by its canonical status.  If the parishes are canonically separate, they will be captured as such.  If there is one parish with multiple worship sites from pre-existing parishes, it will be captured as one parish with multiple sites.  The priest/parish director information will be separate.

We know priests wear many hats and that some may not be serving in parish ministry.  Each priest can participate in the priest related support and engage in the process of creating an individualized growth plan and receiving support.  If you are not currently serving in a parish, your feedback will look slightly different but nonetheless will be helpful.

Thanks for your lifelong ministry!  We want to make sure that we leverage your gifts and talents in your remaining active years.  We also want to make sure that we don’t take those valuable years for granted.  Learning is a lifelong process and while you have learned a lot, as a Church we want to model that we can always grow in our leadership and our faith.

Those staff and parishioners who the pastor/parish director invites to be a part of the consultation session or planning process will get the full survey report. We do not advise sharing the whole report with all your parishioners because it is a lot of information and needs to be put in context.  We suggest that you summarize what you have learned, highlight 2-3 things to celebrate and 2-3 opportunities. Catholic Leadership Institute has sample bulletin inserts and communication pieces to assist you and we can also work with you to craft the most helpful summary and update. It is important to both thank your parishioners and share with them some reflection of what you learned, in addition to incorporating it appropriately in your plans for the future.

We take parishioners’ confidentiality very seriously.  We want them to provide honest feedback. No one in the diocese or on your parish staff - including the pastor - will have access to individual parishioner responses. Likewise, any email addresses or contact information provided will be saved on secure servers and not released for any purpose other than distribution of the survey. As for your parish’s results, your results will be shared with you and those key leaders you bring with you to the consultation session or planning process. Catholic Leadership Institute will not share your parish’s individual data without your expressed written permission. If one of your parishes receives the highest feedback on a particular question (liturgy, preaching, social outreach), that will be indicated on every parish’s report in an effort to share best practice.

The purpose of the Disciple Maker Index is to provide a tool that will help us equip and call forth disciple-makers – people who bring others to know Jesus. We want to build promoters of the faith and promoters of our parishes, so that they can spread the message of parishes as places of community where we encounter Jesus on a personal level. Given this purpose and the fact that the survey will most likely be responded to by people who are already coming to the parish, the Net Promoter Score is a helpful and cutting edge way to analyze survey responses on a 5-point scale of agreement for any given question. When we take the percentage of those who give a specific question a 5 (aka a promoter) and subtract those who gave a specific question a (3 – neither agree nor disagree, 2 – disagree or 1 – strongly disagree) we have the net percentage of promoters for that question. If that net percentage is positive, that is probably not an area you need to be concerned with. If it is negative, it most likely is something you want to think about more. Research shows that the unprompted positive behavior and endorsement of those who give something a 5 on a 5-point scale will influence another person’s behavior. As part of the Disciple Maker Index, you will receive the survey results through this lens. You will also receive all of the data for each question.

For the data to be as helpful as possible, it always needs to be put into context. There is not a one-size fits all parish model. Inner city parishes look different than suburban parishes. Northeast parishes look different than Southwest parishes. It’s helpful for a parish to understand the results in the context of parishes of like profile. It’s also helpful to see what was possible on a particular question. If my parish has 30% of parishioners who would recommend our religious education program to a friend – that is one piece of helpful information. If the national average of 100 parishes for that question is 35%, it still is an opportunity to improve but perhaps it is not where we need to focus right away given limited time and resources. Conversely, if the national average was 67% and parishes of like size and location was 57%, 30% would mean something different. 

Catholic Leadership Institute would hope to see an 8-10% response rate from your parishioners. If your response rate is less than 8%, the data will still be helpful, though not as conclusive as if you had a higher response. 

We encourage you to distribute this link to the email addresses that you already have.This might be a good time to update the email list for your parish- so we’ve provided pew cards for collecting email addresses. Getting a high count of responses is your ultimate goal.