Welcome back to another “Starting Conversations” article, designed to provoke and create new discussions on living as missionary discipleships and fostering parish evangelization. This article presumes familiarity with the language of moving “from maintenance to mission,” found in Fr. James Mallon’s book and apostolate, Divine Renovation. These articles are designed to be shared at staff meetings, parish councils, evangelization committees, and social media for discussion and clarification of thought. Enjoy!–Susan Windley-Daoust

Addiction, as many of us know very well, is a scourge. People who are addicted to alcohol, drugs, pornography, overeating, smoking, gambling, and screens are really and truly trapped in a killing cycle…unless they do hard work, supported by others, to choose life. It isn’t easy. There may be disease involved. But in the end, there is a choice to be made, and only the addicted can choose recovery.

Now: what if parishes are addicted to a maintenance culture over a mission culture?

I apologize if the analogy seems grotesque (comparing maintenance to crack, mission to sobriety). But years ago, I read a theology text that posed: what would it would look like if we considered actual sin as an addiction to choosing what is not God, an addiction to choosing death? The idea really stuck with me. It often came up in the classroom in conversations on Augustine’s Confessions…his life before conversion did seem to mirror the modern reality of addiction. If Augustine were a modern Christian, would he consider sin an addiction? Would he treat virtue, through God’s grace, as recovery?

Granted, there is only so far you can push this modern language in an ancient text. But I want to encourage exploring if the resistance–sometimes incredible resistance–to fostering a mission culture over a maintenance culture is a matter of overcoming an addiction to a maintenance parish culture.

Why do people find themselves in addiction? After all, no one plans to be an addict. I’m no expert, but my friends who have dealt with living in addiction have shared these reasons:

–to fit in

–to redirect from difficulty

–it feels good

–it numbs pain

–it’s comfortable (at least when you are indulging)

A maintenance culture focuses on maintaining what is inherited: buildings, programs, services. Indeed, these can all be great goods in themselves! But Jesus Christ didn’t create a building to be maintained, he founded (and saved, and commissioned) a people–the missioners. The buildings and programs and services are tools the people of God use for mission, to make disciples of all nations (and the neighborhood). A mission culture is focused on God and his call to “be his witnesses” to the people who do not yet know him. Mission is many things, but wholly comfortable? It is not.

Let’s poke these reasons people slide into addiction, and apply them to the familiar rhythm of maintaining a culture that doesn’t suit.

1. We tend to maintenance to fit in. It’s not unusual to want to belong in many ways, but we were never called to “fit in” as Christians. “In the world and not of the world” (see John 17:16) comes to mind. Yet as immigrants to a hostile culture, “fitting in” was to some degree a matter of survival. The history of the American Catholic Church is a tension between fitting in the broader American culture or creating safe places and protecting our families and culture within our parishes. A mission culture proposes a different way through that tension: being his witnesses with confidence, and changing the broader culture in the process.
2. We tend to maintenance to redirect ourselves from difficulty. Throwing oneself in the safe and comfortable busyness of maintenance is a redirect from the difficulty of our current mission to the nones and the drifted away. Most of us are new to living on this mission–previous generations of Catholics could avoid it. So we try to avoid it too, by getting busy. (“Jesus is coming, look busy” is a joke for a reason.) I asked my spiritual director once if a person could busy himself into spiritual death. He responded with “Do I really need to answer that? Of course, yes. It may be the most common temptation, to confuse busyness with holiness.” Being busy with maintaining what we have done in the past is not being on mission. 
3. We tend to maintenance because it feels good. Let’s be honest–there is pleasure in maintenance. You want a wall painted, you paint it, it’s done!…and it looks good! It’s relatively simple and can yield moments of accomplishment. There is one problem. It isn’t the Great Commission. God wants greatness for us, not just simple pleasures.
4. We tend to maintenance because keeping up appearances numbs pain. There is no shortage of pain in the world. But let’s focus on the pain of seeing a parish slowly wither and even die. There are two ways to handle suffering in the Christian life: to pray for supernatural healing and seek healthy avenues of natural healing, and to offer one’s suffering for union with Christ’s passion for the salvation of the world or a particular person/people. Numbing oneself is not an option; the Lord specifically refused to be numbed on the cross (refusing the sour wine and gall). Maintaining appearances–the good looking building, the full slate of programming, etc.–takes a lot of effort and can numb us to harder realities. But the Lord doesn’t want our appearances. He wants our transformation.
5. We tend to maintenance because it’s comfortable. The vast majority of people do not change until the pain of not changing outweighs the pain of changing. Many parishes measure the pros and cons of changing for mission…and stay with the more comfortable and known landscape of maintenance. Change is not as hard as we make it to be, but the internal commitment to change is clearly the hardest part. We have to want to move out of our comfort zone.

So: are we addicted to maintenance culture in our parishes?

Whether this analogy makes sense, only you can answer. But it’s an intriguing way to consider the steady, persistent pull that the false primacy of maintenance seems to have on us…even on people who know that the Great Commission is our first call, and the parish maintenance culture isn’t working. And if you think the analogy works, it also gives us clues in how to respond.

Questions for reflection and discussion:

–Where does this analogy enlighten your parish dynamic?

–Where does the analogy fall apart?

–If there is any truth in the analogy, are there lessons we can learn from the process of addiction recovery (for example, 12 step processes, etc.)?