[Preaching and Leadership]
[preaching]
More than a rallying cry uttered as a farewell, Jesus’ final words — “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19) — give preaching its impetus and its terminus.
With the courage of faith inspired by the Resurrection, and with a strength of character emboldened at Pentecost, the remaining apostles did what the Master commanded.
Through the witness of their lives and the power of their words, they set in motion the course of proclaiming the good news that would reach to the ends of the world.
That courageous testimony undergirds the mission of the Church they brought to life. The Acts of the Apostles highlights the “boldness” (parrhesia) with St. Paul saying, “With complete assurance [parrhesia] and without hindrance he proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 28:31).
Renowned figures in the life of the early Church, such as Origen, Augustine and Gregory the Great carried on the tradition of leading through preaching. Countless others throughout the Church’s history did likewise, as do modern-day evangelists like Bishop Robert Barron and Father Mike Schmitz.
For the Church in the contemporary world, however, the connection between preaching and leadership risks dissipation from changing ecclesial circumstances. Companion publications from the University of Mary Press highlight the challenges.
The world has changed, as we now live in “the first culture in history that was once deeply Christian but that by a slow and thorough process has been consciously ridding itself of its Christian basis” (“From Christendom to Apostolic Mission:Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age,” University of Mary).
Religion has changed, as the spiritual narrative favored by most moderns tells a newly “progressive” tale with a tragic trend. Today’s guiding belief alters the story of faith “in the direction of self-redemption.” Along the way, it destroys “the dramatic sweep, moral seriousness, and missionary spirit of the Christianity from which it arose and to which it owes most of its potency” (“The Religion of the Day,” University of Mary).
And Church leadership has changed, as the dearth of clergy and the drift of parishioners necessitate massive institutional restructuring. Priests today find themselves with increasing pastoral responsibilities, to be carried out across wider geographies and with fewer means of support.
In such a radically altered landscape, can priests today boldly fulfill the Lord’s never-ending mandate? Will their preaching lead to disciple-making?
To answer these questions in the affirmative, as we propose, we must first address the current age of the ecclesial life and its challenges to pastoral leaders. Then, we can consider the specifically spiritual dimension of priestly leadership and how the pulpit is its primary locus.
Only then can we conclude with a look at how priests can take up the apostolic challenge to lead through preaching.
[Leadership in a New Century]
In 2020, the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Clergy published an instruction on “The Pastoral Conversion of the Parish Community in the Service of the Evangelizing Mission of the Church.”
Among its notable claims is the recognition that, due to increased mobility and the digital culture, “the parish territory is no longer a geographical space only, but also the context in which people express their lives in terms of relationships, reciprocal service and ancient traditions.”
Accordingly, “it is in this ‘existential territory’ where the challenges facing the Church in the midst of the community are played out” (No. 16).
Those challenges arise from cultural factors that have affected parish life in ways unfamiliar to those who grew up in the age of Christendom. The Catholic Leadership Institute’s 2023 white paper on “Effective Pastoring in the 21st Century” highlights some of those new realities (cf. pp. 6-7).
Today’s parishes exist “on the peripheries” — with the local Church no longer functioning as the center of a neighborhood. Instead of exercising influence on local thought and life, they are subject to the dominant forces of secular culture.
Today’s parishes are more “transient” — with participation more like the result of “church shopping.” As a result of moral failures, and owing to legitimate fears, priests and people in parishes develop fewer interpersonal relationships.
Today’s parishes are “multigenerational” — with up to seven distinct age groups living simultaneously in a single parish. The diversity among parishioners yields widely differing experiences of, and expectations for, Church life.
And today’s parishes function “without guarantees.” Increasingly, they face the stress of trying to maintain their existence amid diocesan efforts at restructuring, while at the same time attempting a more missionary mode of outreach to believers and nonbelievers alike.
Amid this new landscape, calls abound for increasing lay leadership in parishes. More than a functional necessity, growth in lay ministry reflects a more serious approach to the role of all the baptized.
But this requires a collective change in outlook; as Pope Benedict XVI urges, laity “must no longer be viewed as ‘collaborators’ of the clergy but truly recognized as ‘co-responsible’ for the Church’s being and action” (Opening of the Pastoral Convention of the Diocese of Rome, May 26, 2009).
[Strategies for Preaching in an Apostolic Age]
“The main evangelistic task in an apostolic age … is the presentation of the Gospel in such a way that the minds of its hearers can be given the opportunity to be transformed, converted from one way of looking at the world to a different way. …
“Preaching in an apostolic age needs to begin with the appeal to a completely different way of seeing things; it needs to offer a different narrative concerning the great human drama; it needs to aim to put into place the key elements of the integrated Christian vision of the world within which the moral and spiritual disciplines the Church imposes find their place. …
“The exposition of the Gospel, in preaching and teaching and liturgy and architecture and the arts, needs to accent this conversion of mind.
There needs to be a counter-narrative to the overwhelming non-Christian narrative currently on offer. The Christian mythic vision (the true one) needs to be made available such that it can chase out the false myths of the day in the minds of believers and inquirers.”
— From “Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age” (University of Maryland)
As laity exercise co-responsibility, clergy retain an essential role in pastoral leadership. By virtue of ordination, priests share in the threefold responsibility (munera) of teaching, sanctifying and governing. Proclaiming the Word, administering the sacraments and leading faith communities remain the distinctive ways in which priests are called to “go and make disciples.”
Hence, leadership in parish life still falls squarely on priests. Their particular efforts exercise a decisive (though not sole) determination of the extent to which communities of faith thrive.
Research from the Catholic Leadership Institute demonstrates convincingly that “parishioners are 11 times more likely to recommend their parish if they recommend their pastor” (“Embracing Unity in a Next Generation Parish,” Via magazine, Fall 2023).
Because preaching correlates strongly with how pastors (and all priests) are regarded, the particular question we seek to answer comes with some urgency.
Amid the new reality of parish life, how can priests lead with the apostolic boldness needed to create, support and build a community of disciples priest greeting faithful
[A Priest’s ‘Chief’ Role]
In any organization, leadership encompasses multiple tasks, such as executing strategies, managing people, conducting processes, directing projects, administering resources and producing outcomes.
The corporate world often divides those duties among the C-suite personnel, including those with executive (CEO), financial (CFO), operational (COO), and informational (CIO) functions.
In any parish, organizational responsibilities are similar; however, spiritual leadership also — and more importantly — entails the threefold work of teaching, sanctifying and governing.
Priests carry that out in ways both personal (exemplary holiness) and professional (ministerial competence). The setting in which this dual dimension of the priest’s work is most evident to the greatest number of people at any given time is undoubtedly the liturgical pulpit.
[Being a Voice for the Work]
“Augustine tried to make clear … the nature of priestly service. It came to him from meditation on the figure of John the Baptist. … He points out that in the New Testament John is described, with a saying borrowed from Isaiah as a ‘voice,’ while Christ appears in the Gospel of John as ‘the Word.’ The relation of ‘voice’ (vox) to ‘word’ (verbum) helps to make clear the mutual relationship between Christ and the priest.
The word exists in someone’s heart before it is ever perceptible to the senses through the voice. Through the mediation of the voice, it then enters into the perception of the other person and is then present likewise in his heart, without the speaker’s having thereby in any sense lost the word. Thus, the sensory noise — that is, the voice — that carries the word from one person to the other (or others) passes away. The word remains.
Ultimately, the task of the priest is quite simply to be a voice for the word: ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ — the voice has no other purpose than to pass on the word; it then once more effaces itself.
On this basis the stature and the humbleness of priestly service are both equally clear: the priest is, like John the Baptist, purely a forerunner, a servant of the Word.
It is not he who matters, but the other. Yet he is, with his entire existence, vox; it is his mission to be a voice for the Word, and thus, precisely in being radically referred to, dependent upon, someone else, he takes a share in the stature of the mission of the Baptist and in the mission of the Logos himself.”
— Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion” (Ignatius Press), p. 16
In corporate speak, we might acknowledge the priest’s role as that of a “CPO” — chief proclamation officer. The CPO leads by championing the corporate message.
In the Church, the mystical Body of Christ, the priest shares a divine message — the Word of God — and does so in a manner that non-clergy cannot. He has the task and responsibility of enabling people to understand and appreciate the good news of salvation, to grasp the import of the Gospel with ever-deepening faith, and to act on that faith for the betterment of all people’s lives in this world with a view toward their ultimate destiny in eternal life.
That work of proclamation happens in, and must account for, the changed ecclesial landscape. Outwardly, the religious vision, assumptions and ways of looking at life of Christendom, so familiar to most Catholics, have less and less influence in today’s progressive secular society. Hence, the urgent call for preachers to take up the challenge of the apostolic age.
Inwardly, a CPO’s messaging is directed to a parish congregation, where the ministry of preaching has the purpose of building up a local community of disciples.
Coordinated by the pastor, parish priests exercise this ministry by leading the faithful to a fuller understanding of the parish’s mission and vision, a greater engagement in its programs and activities, and a deeper fellowship through various forms of worship. To fulfill that ministry, a CPO must give time and attention to his craft, so as to develop the leadership skills necessary for doing the job well.
As Father J. Ronald Knott rightly claims in his contribution to “Preaching as Spiritual Leadership: Guiding the Faithful as Mystic and Mystagogue” (edited by Michael Connors, Liturgy Training Publications):
“It is not enough, according to our mission and ministry, for a parish priest to be personally holy; he also needs to have the skills to lead others to holiness.” Chief among those skills is “the ability to influence another through invitation, persuasion, and example, to move from where they are to where God wants them to be, especially through the skillful use of the pulpit.”
Because that ability is the CPO’s primary duty, “failing to appreciate the power of the Word and squandering the bully pulpits entrusted them has to be among the biggest sins parish priests can commit” (chap. 18).
[Leading through Preaching]
A priest is presented with a weekly opportunity to fulfill his duty of spiritual leadership when he mounts the pulpit in front of the assembled congregation.
To lead that crowd toward the kingdom of God by way of preaching, as Jesus sought to do, he ought to give them what they need, even if that is not what they came for! What they need is to hear good news.
Preachers envision that proclamation with what Pope Francis identified, quoting Pope Paul VI, as a “reverence for the truth” (Evangelii Gaudium, No. 146). By means of such reverence, priests lead people not by way of political positions or sociological trends or therapeutic theories or entertaining diversions
Rather, they bring to them the Word of God that, alone, offers salvation to the world. As the authors of “The Religion of the Day” rightly stress, preachers today should help people to see the centrality of Christ in their lives; to recognize the importance of awakening their minds to the supernatural mystery of Jesus’s birth, death, resurrection and ascension; and to appreciate the treasure that comes with cultivating a personal relationship with God through him and with him and in him.
[preaching]
Focusing their attention on a divine message, priests can appreciate that their task “is quite simply to be a voice for the word.” With that mindset, they can confidently look upon their weekly work not as a duty but as an opportunity, not something difficult they are obligated to do, but something beneficial for people that only they can do. Pope Francis describes it as “the wonderful but difficult task of joining loving hearts, the hearts of the Lord and his people” (Evangelii Gaudium, No. 143).
The task of conjoining hearts today may require a sharpening of preaching skills. Just as corporate leaders know the importance of continuing professional education, so, too, priests grow as spiritual leaders by cultivating their ability to preach effectively, especially in terms of how they get ready for and give voice to their proclamation.
When speaking publicly, leaders prepare what they will say. Priests, whose mission is to speak God’s word publicly, prepare what they will say by first listening to the one who inspires every understanding of the divine word — the Holy Spirit.
Every preacher “needs to approach the word with a docile and prayerful heart so that it may deeply penetrate his thoughts and feelings and bring about a new outlook in him” (No. 149).
[Keeping Positive]
Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”), has this bit of advice to homilists:
“Another feature of a good homily is that it is positive. It is not so much concerned with pointing out what shouldn’t be done, but with suggesting what we can do better.
In any case, if it does draw attention to something negative, it will also attempt to point to a positive and attractive value, lest it remain mired in complaints, laments, criticisms and reproaches.
Positive preaching always offers hope, points to the future, does not leave us trapped in negativity. How good it is when priests, deacons and the laity gather periodically to discover resources which can make preaching more attractive!” (No. 159).
Leaders know that ideas develop over the course of time and emerge from experience. Similarly, preparation for preaching cannot be limited to a particular time slot on the priest’s weekly calendar. Rather, the message develops through daily reflection on the divine word and emerges amid a priest’s many activities.
In this way, preachers learn how that same divine word can impact the busy lives of the people to whom they speak.
To speak effectively, leaders strategize. Because communication happens in what is heard, they consider both what they will say and how they will say it. To accomplish their goal of getting others to follow, leaders craft their message with a determined content and a decisive form (or flow). So, too, for priests who seek to lead through preaching.
In terms of what they will say, preachers should limit the use of “churchy” language (theological jargon or doctrinal differentia), which is often incomprehensible to today’s faithful. People in the pews need to hear language they can understand on their own terms. Without this simplicity, Pope Francis says, preachers “risk speaking to a void” (No. 158).
Similarly, preachers will be better understood when they order their words coherently, in a way that those listening can easily follow. After all, people in the pews know not what the preacher plans to say! To achieve his spiritual goal, effective preachers structure their words in a way that leads people to a holistic engagement with the Word of God — as Pope Francis pictures it, the inspired message “enters through the ears, goes to the heart and passes to the hands in order to do good deeds” (General Audience, Feb. 7, 2018).
In practical terms, this means that preachers need to speak about God’s actions more than human imperatives.
While offering people insight into the Word is foundational, and exhorting people to live as the Lord’s disciples is helpful, the key to leading is to convince listeners that what God has done (and is doing) through the words and deeds of Jesus is truly “good news” for them.
That conviction comes about when preachers direct the proclamation of divine love and mercy to people’s hearts and souls, which in turn moves them toward conversion and a better way of living.
Priests effect this salvific transformation when they preach with the boldness of the apostles, whose commission they share. That proclamation issues from their own faith and a true pastoral concern, for “a person who is not convinced, enthusiastic, certain and in love, will convince nobody” (Evangelii Gaudium, No. 266).
But their authority as leaders comes from above. In the power of the Spirit, they proclaim the Word of God and thereby lead people to be and grow as disciples of the Lord Jesus.
Having reflected on how leaders speak and how preachers lead, we conclude with a thought that is part assertion, part anticipation.
“The American Beliefs Study: Religious Preferences and Practices” (ACS Technologies, 2021) reports that sacramental celebrations and liturgical preaching represent two of the top three reasons that Catholics choose a parish.
Since effective preaching leads to an enhanced experience of the Mass, priests who lead people to encounter the Lord Jesus regularly through preaching will certainly have a profound impact on parish life.
That impact, in turn, holds great potential for a renewal of the faith and a rejuvenation of parish life in today’s apostolic age.
What we have learned from the national movement to restore understanding and devotion to the great mystery of the Eucharist suggests a hopeful lesson for priestly leadership through preaching.
As the renowned American evangelist Dwight L. Moody once put it, “The best way to revive a church is to build a fire in the pulpit.”
