So when the conversation comes up about switching platforms, the first instinct that triggers is: don’t change the status quo. Parish offices don’t have the luxury of a six-month “transition period” where everyone patiently learns a new system while the phone keeps ringing and sacramental prep deadlines keep coming. You’ve got OCIA candidates who need certificates. You’ve got a finance council meeting next Tuesday. And your volunteer who manages ministry scheduling only comes in on Wednesdays.

All of that context matters. But what if the system you’ve been trained on is costing you time, visibility, and giving revenue that you’ve never measured because the tools to measure it weren’t there?

It’s the question that a growing number of parishes have asked themselves in the past few years.

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“We already know ParishSoft”

Staff fluency with a system has real operational value. Nobody wants to be the person who pushed for a platform change and then spends three months apologizing for it.

But it’s worth considering that, “We know ParishSoft,” sometimes means “we’ve built workarounds for ParishSoft’s limitations, and those workarounds feel like okay.” The admin who exports to Excel every week to build a report the system can’t generate natively. The business manager who keeps a separate spreadsheet for tracking which families have completed which sacraments because the records view doesn’t connect them. The pastor who can’t access parish data from his phone when he’s making a hospital visit.

At St. Brigid, the staff had built those same kinds of habits around their previous software. When their old provider decided to sunset the product, they didn’t have the luxury of a slow evaluation. They had to move. And what they found surprised them: ParishStaq’s LEAD App gave their pastor mobile access to the information he used to have to call the office for. The finance administrator started hitting goals she’d been chasing for years. Ministry scheduling, which had been a weekly headache, got significantly easier.

The migration question

If you’ve been on ParishSoft for five years, ten years, maybe longer, you’re sitting on thousands of family records, sacramental histories, giving data, ministry assignments. The idea of moving all of that to a new system sounds like a project that could swallow your entire summer.

Two things are true at the same time. Migration is a real project that requires planning. And Pushpay has migrated enough parishes and dioceses (including Seattle, Springfield, and Nashville) to have a tested process for it. The onboarding isn’t a PDF and a “good luck.” It’s a coached implementation with a team that understands Catholic parish workflows, from OCIA process queues to cemetery records to multi-campus Mass scheduling.

St. Brigid’s business manager, Debbie Hedley, described her experience with sacramental record migration specifically. Her words are worth hearing directly:

That phrase, “one touch or just a double touch,” is the kind of thing only someone who spent years digging through filing cabinets and cross-referencing sacramental books would say. Daily calls for records. Think about what that workflow looked like before: pull the binder, find the entry, photocopy it, mail it. Now the record lives with the person’s profile. The upload is attached. The dates are entered. When someone calls asking for their baptismal certificate, the response time drops from days to minutes.

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What about sacramental records?

ParishStaq was built with the importance of sacramental records in mind. Over 5 million sacraments have been recorded in Pushpay’s systems, tracking baptisms, first communions, confirmations, marriages, with fields for godparents, sponsors, witnesses, and the supporting documentation. You can upload scanned copies of original certificates and attach them directly to the parishioner’s profile.

What Debbie described at St. Brigid isn’t simply a convenience improvement. When a parishioner moves to a new diocese and needs their confirmation record for marriage prep, your office can pull it up and verify it without pulling a single binder off the shelf. When a family calls asking about their child’s first communion date from eight years ago, it’s there. Connected to the family profile, not buried in a filing cabinet that only one person in the office knows how to navigate.

No system will eliminate the need to maintain your physical sacramental registers. Canon law requires them. But a system that mirrors those records digitally, with document uploads and proper dating, turns your office from a bottleneck into a resource.

The cost of staying put

Here’s where the conversation usually gets quiet. Because the cost of switching is visible (staff time, training, implementation fees), but the cost of staying is mostly invisible.

The conversation often stalls here. That’s because the costs associated with switching are obvious (staff time, training, and implementation fees), whereas the cost of staying put is largely hidden.

Pushpay processes payments directly, which means a 95.1% transaction success rate compared to the industry average of around 92%. That gap sounds small until you do the math on your annual offertory. For a parish processing $500,000 in digital giving annually, the difference between 92% and 95% success rates is roughly $15,000 in donations that either reach your parish or don’t. Pushpay’s Everygift features recover an average of $19,000 per church per year in failed payments that would otherwise disappear.

Then there’s the visibility question. Can your current system show you which families are disengaging before they stop coming entirely? Can it connect Mass attendance to Faith Formation enrollment to giving patterns in a single view? Can your pastor pull up a family’s complete profile, sacramental history included, from his phone before walking into a hospital room?

If the answer to those questions is “not really” or “we use a separate spreadsheet for that,” the cost of staying isn’t zero. It’s just harder to see.

Retraining the team

Pushpay’s implementation approach includes coached onboarding, which means your team isn’t watching tutorial videos alone. There’s a person who understands the specific workflows of Catholic parish offices, not generic church software workflows, but the actual day-to-day of how sacramental prep, ministry scheduling, facilities management, and offertory tracking work in a Catholic context.

St. Brigid’s team found that the new system actually reduced their daily workload once the learning curve passed. The pastor has parish information on his phone through the LEAD App. The finance administrator has better tools for tracking against giving goals. Ministry scheduling went from a weekly coordination headache to something their volunteers could largely manage themselves.

That’s not to minimize the transition. It’s to say that the discomfort of learning a new system lasts weeks. The benefits of a better system last years.

What a real switch looks like

If you’re genuinely evaluating whether to move from ParishSoft to ParishStaq, here’s what the process looks like in practice. Pushpay assigns an implementation team that works with your staff to map your current data, identify what migrates directly and what needs cleaning, and build a timeline that accounts for your parish’s calendar. (Nobody is going to ask you to migrate your database during Holy Week.)

Your sacramental records, family data, giving history, and ministry assignments transfer into a unified system where everything connects. A parishioner’s giving record, sacramental history, ministry involvement, and Faith Formation enrollment all live in one profile. When your data is connected like that, your parish staff stops being data clerks and starts being pastoral support.

Want to see what St. Brigid’s experience looked like from the inside? Check out their story:

Switching parish software is a decision that affects every person who walks into your office, calls your front desk, or gives to your parish online. It shouldn’t be made lightly. But it also shouldn’t be avoided just because the current system is familiar. Familiar and effective aren’t always the same thing.

If you’re curious whether ParishStaq would be a fit for your parish, Pushpay offers a demo that’s specific to Catholic parish workflows. No generic church software walkthrough. Request one and see whether what St. Brigid found holds true for your community too.

Help us make this page great! If you see something that is inaccurate or misrepresented, or have an idea to improve it, please contact us.

It’s fair to ask. Pushpay didn’t start in the Catholic space. The company built its reputation serving Protestant churches, and ParishStaq came later. So the skepticism is reasonable. Plenty of software vendors have tried to serve the Church by slapping sacramental terminology on a product built for someone else entirely.

The honest answer to that question is: it depends on what you mean. If you mean whether Pushpay was founded by Catholics with a mission rooted in Catholic tradition, no. If you mean whether the people building the product, supporting your parish, and making roadmap decisions actually know what it means to sit in a pew, teach OCIA, prepare a diocese for its annual appeal, or lose sleep over a stewardship campaign, yes. Emphatically.

Here are four of them.

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First assignment: the sacrament tracker

Sara Anderson is the Senior Director of Product at Pushpay. She oversees ParishStaq’s product development, which means she’s ultimately accountable for what gets built, what doesn’t, and whether the priorities reflect what parishes actually need.

Before she joined Pushpay, her parish needed a second-grade religious ed teacher. She stepped in. That second-grade year is first communion, one of the most significant moments in a Catholic child’s formation, and she taught it for about ten years.

Her first product assignment at Pushpay was to build the SacramentTracker.

“My first assignment at Pushpay was to build our sacrament tracker,” she said. “That’s a wonderful practical application of how my personal life and faith got to be brought into this company.”

That’s not a coincidence the company engineered for a press release. It’s what happens when someone who has spent a decade preparing children for their first Eucharist is the one deciding how sacramental records should work in software. She understood, at a practical level, what a faith formation director actually needs to see, what data matters, and where parish systems tend to lose the thread on a family’s sacramental journey.

That decade of tracking which kids had received which sacraments, and where families tended to fall through the cracks, shaped how she thought about data at scale.

“I’m really proud of being able to bring that to market,” Anderson said, “and to have that whole picture of a person across an entire diocese from their ministry involvement to their generosity. To have that whole picture of a person, I think is just beautiful.”

The friar who fields sales calls

Anthony Welch is a Strategic Account Executive. In that role, he works with parishes and dioceses evaluating ParishStaq, walking them through the product, understanding their needs, making the case. What’s on his resume before Pushpay is not typical sales background.

Welch served as a focused missionary and then as a Franciscan friar of renewal before discerning his way into a different kind of service.

“Being a Catholic is at the core of who I am,” he said. “It’s not just a part of my life, something that’s compartmentalized on the side.”

That’s a different kind of credibility than knowing your product cold. When Welch talks to a parish administrator about the weight of managing ministry on a skeleton staff, or to a pastor about the friction between administrative burden and actual pastoral work, he’s drawing on something most account executives can’t. He’s been the one doing the ministry. He knows what it costs when the tools get in the way.

“The church has always embraced new means and new methods,” he said. “Paul would use whatever means were available to him to proclaim the gospel.”

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A crisis, and then clarity

BJ Ball grew up Catholic in Colorado. His baptism. His first confession at a small church just outside Cripple Creek. First communion at the parish where his grandfather laid the cornerstone. His mother helped lead the capital campaign that built the first church in Conifer, moving a congregation from a Mexican restaurant into an actual sanctuary. Faith was ambient in his upbringing.

Then it became urgent.

A few years ago, his son was in a serious car accident. Medical professionals came with confident projections that turned out to be false. What remained, what Ball leaned into during the recovery, was faith.

“Faith seemed to play a bigger role in his recovery,” he said, “and that really made us trust and believe that following him and doing what was right, and listening to the church and taking its teachings and making it a part of our everyday, was the right thing.”

Pushpay came across his radar shortly after. “It felt like the right match of passion and profession,” he said, “where I got to take that same faith and put it into everything I do on a day-to-day basis.”

Ball is now the General Manager of the Catholic line of business. He’s accountable for where ParishStaq goes as a product and as a market presence. Under his leadership, the Catholic team has grown to over 800 parish customers and four diocesan relationships.

He’s also clear-eyed about the gap. “We have a lot of work to do,” he said, “and to do that we have to communicate effectively about the value that we’re bringing.”

The metric he comes back to: “How do we keep the Church central in all we do, take the teachings of our new Pope Leo XIV and make sure that we’re keeping humans at the center of their interactions with technology?”

Envelope numbers aren’t the point

Jonathan Baca came to Pushpay through a different route than most people in church tech. He studied at Franciscan University and the University of Dallas, taught Catholic theology, and worked in a diocese stewardship office before eventually joining Pushpay as a Strategic Customer Success Manager.

That background informs how he talks about what the software is actually supposed to do.

“It’s not just software for the sake of tracking envelope numbers,” he said. “It’s software for the sake of engaging people and bringing them closer to Jesus.”

He said that in the context of onboarding, the moment when a parish is transitioning onto a new platform and everyone has opinions about features and workflows. His job is partly to remind them of the larger frame. The admin functions matter. The reporting matters. And the point of all of it is what happens when a parish can actually see its people, not just manage them.

That was also his answer when asked about the greatest opportunity facing the Church right now: “For people to be seen by the church.”

In an era when social media has wired everyone to perform visibility, he thinks the Church’s actual advantage is the capacity for genuine, personal recognition. The technology should make that easier, not more abstract.

When Baca started at Pushpay, parishes were regularly asking whether the company was truly invested in Catholic ministry. He was part of answering it, one customer success call at a time.

“Now that we have Catholics helping to build the product, I feel we can confidently say this is a Catholic product that can serve the Catholic Church.”

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And the answer is…

So: is Pushpay a Catholic company? The product was built by a woman who teaches first communion. The account executive who walks your diocese through a demo spent years in religious life, and the general manager running the Catholic business decided, after a family crisis, that his faith and his work couldn’t stay separate. The customer success manager who helps your parish through implementation spent years in a diocesan stewardship office before any of this.

That’s what “built for Catholics by Catholics” means in practice. It’s not a tagline. It’s a description of who picks up the phone when you call.

But as pastoral leaders kept praying, that story began shifting in ways we haven’t seen in a generation.

New data reveals something truly beautiful stirring beneath the surface. The young adults who remain Catholic—and the rapidly growing number choosing to become Catholic—are showing up with a frequency and intensity that surpasses every older generation. They are seeking out the sacraments in numbers dioceses haven’t witnessed in over a decade.

What makes this moment so profoundly important is the reality that what happens next will determine whether this becomes a lasting spiritual home for them, or just a fleeting footnote in their lives.

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The data is clear: Young Catholics are the most engaged generation

The shift is undeniable. According to the Barna Group, Gen Z and Millennial churchgoers are now the most frequent in-person attendees in the United States. Gen Z averages 1.9 weekends per month—about 23 services per year. Millennials follow closely at 1.8 weekends. Baby Boomers, by comparison, are attending roughly 17 services annually (Barna Group). As Daniel Copeland, Barna’s vice president of research, noted, young adult attendance has nearly doubled since 2020 (Barna Group).

Within Catholic parishes, this pattern is even more striking. Among young adult respondents, 50% attend Mass daily or weekly, and 84% attend at least a few times a year. They are also the age group most likely to seek out Confession, spend time in Eucharistic Adoration, and show up for parish social events (Catholic Review).

Church attendance by generation

Sources: Barna Group; Leadership Roundtable; America Magazine. Note: Barna attendance data reflects cross-denominational Christian churchgoers; Catholic-specific engagement data drawn from Leadership Roundtable.

It’s important to note that the overall share of Americans identifying as Catholic hasn’t suddenly skyrocketed. What has changed is the heart of the people in the pews. 

The era of “cultural Catholicism” (identifying with the faith out of familial obligation) is largely over. The young adults sitting in the pews today are there because they choose to be.

What’s drawing young adults to the Catholic Church

To welcome them well, parishes need to understand why they are returning. Their motivations look very different from previous generations, largely because they are responding to a deeply secular, exhausted modern culture.

In a world defined by digital superficiality and endless algorithmic feeds, young adults are craving the community found in the Body of Christ, the discipline of the Faith, and the personal transformation that happens through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

The Church offers a tangible pathway to the divine that stands in stark contrast to the utilitarianism of their daily lives.

They also aren’t looking for a watered-down message. They crave authenticity over accommodation, attracted to the Catholic Church precisely because it offers a counter-cultural way of life centered on humility, self-sacrifice, and objective truth.

Finally, the proliferation of high-quality Catholic theological content online acts as a powerful digital apologetics tool. Podcasts and YouTube videos are answering their complex philosophical questions and building a bridge of trust before they ever step foot in a parish.

The Lent and Easter proving ground

If young adults are the most engaged demographic, Lent and Easter are the most critical pastoral moments to reach them.

Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation, yet it consistently produces the third-highest Mass attendance of the year—and the highest participation rate among young adult Catholics. Mark Gray, director of polls at CARA, stated it perfectly: “If there’s any moment that the Church has to reach out to young adult Catholics, Lent and specifically Ash Wednesday is the time” (St. Louis Review).

The 2025 Easter season proved this is far more than just a holiday obligation. Dioceses across the country reported staggering increases in conversions and individuals entering the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) (National Catholic Register; Catholic World Report):

2025 conversion growth by diocese

Sources: National Catholic Register; Catholic World Report

Father Juan Ochoa of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles captured the scale of this beautifully: typical year-over-year growth runs about 10%. In 2025, it hit 45%—driven partly by a post-COVID period of reflection that led many to finally act on the spiritual questions they had been carrying for years (Catholic World Report).

While diocesan reporting typically doesn’t segment these new converts by age, the broader generational attendance data strongly suggests young adults are the primary engine behind this incredible surge.

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The retention disconnect

Traditional hospitality—a handshake at the door and a paper bulletin—yields a roughly 15% visitor retention rate (Church Brand Guide). Put plainly: for every 100 people who walk through the doors on Easter Sunday, 85 may slip away.

Why? The reasons are deeply interpersonal. Lifeway Research found that 32% of young adults who left church cited “judgmental or hypocritical” congregants as a primary reason. Among Millennials who don’t attend, 85% perceive Christians as hypocritical (Barna / Lifeway Research). Furthermore, this is a generation shaped by a culture of “ghosting.” If they feel unseen or unwelcome, they won’t write an email or ask for an exit interview. They just quietly disappear.

Smiling ushers and a warm homily aren’t enough to combat this. How do you build deep, authentic relationships when hundreds of visitors walk through the doors on a single Sunday? How do you prove that the community is deeply loving and invested in them?

Parishes have to reach out. And they have to do it fast.

The 48-hour window

Parishes have 48 hours. If someone from the parish reaches out to a first-time visitor within that window, the return rate jumps 70% compared to communities that delay (Church Brand Guide). Wait longer, and the moment fades.

Helping a first-time guest make seven personal connections makes them 80% more likely to come back. Getting a visitor into a small group, a parish social, or a ministry within 30 days makes them four times more likely to stay (Church Brand Guide).

Yet, the Catholic Leadership Institute’s Disciple Maker Index found that only 47% of young Catholics strongly agree that their parish makes them feel welcome and accepted. Focus groups revealed a simple, beautiful desire: they want someone to personally reach out when they join, and they want spaces where relationships can move beyond the surface (Catholic Leadership Institute).

This is where parishes must bridge the gap between spiritual desires and everyday logistics.

Technology as invisible scaffolding for true ministry

It can feel jarring to talk about the Eucharist and authentic relationships in one breath, and text messaging or software in the next. To be clear: automated texts and digital giving do not save souls. Real, face-to-face pastoral relationships do.

But technology serves as the invisible scaffolding that allows those relationships to happen. When a youth minister is buried under paper connect cards, or a pastor doesn’t even know a young family visited, people slip through the cracks. They feel ignored, which reinforces their fear of an uncaring church. Using technology thoughtfully buys parish staff the time and the logistical awareness to actually facilitate the human connections this generation so desperately craves.

For Gen Z and Millennials, a parish that operates as an “analog island in a digital sea” feels disconnected from their reality (Dr. Larry Witzel, “The Digital Transformation of Church Communication”).

Communication: Meet them where they are

Church emails average a 25% open rate (Lifeway Research). For Gen Z, email is a formal workplace tool, not a place for community connection. Texts, however, hit a 98% open rate, with 90% read within three minutes (ResourceUMC; Intradyn). The average response rate is 45%, and 83% of consumers prefer texting for organizational communication (Notifyre). Sending a warm, authentic text is how a ministry leader gets their foot in the door to invite someone to coffee.

Giving: Remove unnecessary barriers

In 2025, among 1.8 million first-time church donors tracked globally by Pushpay, 58% used Apple Pay to complete their gift (Pushpay / GlobeNewsWire). Digital wallets allow for spontaneous generosity without the barrier of digging out a credit card. Recurring giving now accounts for 42% of all digital donations, yet nearly half of all churches still don’t offer automated recurring options (Ministry Brands). This isn’t just a tech issue; it’s a stewardship issue.

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The playbook: Turning visitors into lifelong parishioners

This Lent and Easter present a massive opportunity. Here is how a thoughtful, pastoral approach naturally unfolds in a parish setting.

Building digital

Pastors might encourage daily prayer challenges through apps like Hallow, or use SMS to send a short, encouraging two-sentence reflection every Wednesday. By implementing these digital habits, members of your congregation will start to feel a warm, consistent connection to the parish’s voice.

Preparing the digital front door

According to Barna Research, 46% of non-Christians do not understand the theological significance of Easter. When a curious seeker visits a parish website on Holy Saturday, he shouldn’t just see a Mass schedule. They need to find a welcoming message explaining exactly where to park, what to expect, and a brief, beautiful explanation of why Easter matters.

Simple connection in the pew

Instead of asking visitors to fumble for a pen and a paper card while juggling a toddler, a parish can place a simple QR code in the pew. A visiting family can scan it and fill out a brief welcome form on their phone in 30 seconds before Mass begins, allowing them to instantly connect without distraction.

The 48-hour follow-up and the pathway to connection

Once that family or individual submits their information, the details naturally populate the church management system and alert the pastoral team. Because these tools talk to one another, the young adult minister receives a direct notification. Let’s play out a hypothetical scenario of what the next steps could look like:

On Monday afternoon, he sends a quick text: “Hey John, so glad you joined us for Easter Mass at St. Jude’s! I’d love to buy you a coffee this week and hear a bit of your story. – Mike, Young Adult Ministry.” John now feels seen by the Church. He feels like he is more than a face in the congregation, he replies a few hours later, and they set up a time for Thursday morning. At that Thursday coffee, Mike takes the next natural step and personally invites John to an upcoming parish social or a small group. The ultimate goal is moving someone from an anonymous visitor to a known community member.

The data heavily supports this relational approach. Churches using a multi-week text follow-up sequence achieve a 56% retention rate for guests (Text In Church). Platforms equipped with two-way messaging consistently hit 50% visitor retention—vastly outperforming the 15% baseline of traditional methods (Text-Em-All). Furthermore, data confirms that inviting a guest to take a concrete next step within 30 days makes them four times more likely to become regular parishioners (Church Brand Guide).

Bringing it all together

One of the greatest challenges in parish ministry is finding the time to do the actual ministry. Parish staff often spend so much time fighting with disconnected spreadsheets, paper records, and clunky software that it becomes difficult to focus on the person standing right in front of them.

The 2024 Catholic State of Church Technology report found that 43% of parishes evaluate their technology only reactively—when something breaks (Pushpay / Crux). This leaves parish staff exhausted and visitors feeling unseen.

The answer lies in tools designed to shoulder that administrative burden. Resources like ParishStaq by Pushpay are built specifically to help Catholic parishes bring these everyday tasks into one organized place. It connects digital giving (including Apple Pay and Google Pay), text and email communication, automated follow-up steps, and sacramental record management. The impact is real, and it works naturally for parishes of any size.

In 2025 alone, Pushpay supported over 14,000 churches in processing 53.6 million gifts. For Catholic parishes specifically, ParishStaq quietly managed the digital importation of 5.6 million sacramental records and supported the recording of 53,000 new sacraments (Pushpay / GlobeNewsWire).

When a parish’s communication tools work quietly in the background, leaders aren’t just managing data. They are freeing up their pastoral team to do what they were called to do: love people, build relationships, and walk with them toward Christ.

The window is open. Don’t let it close.

Parishes prayed for them to come back, and they are. Young adults are returning to the Catholic Church with an intentionality and a hunger for the Eucharist that is incredibly inspiring. They are filling OCIA classes and lining up for Confession.

But their tolerance for slipping through the cracks is low. If they feel unseen or bogged down by administrative barriers, they will quietly step away.

The parishes that will thrive in this moment are the ones that meet young adults where they are. They offer the deep, beautiful truths of the Catholic faith. And they support those truths with the thoughtful, genuine communication this generation is accustomed to.

The data is clear, and the tools are available. The only question is whether parish communities will be ready to truly see them, know them, and walk with them when they walk through the doors this Lent and Easter. Equipping a parish with the right tools isn’t just an administrative upgrade. It is a profound act of hospitality that removes the barriers so that every seeker has the chance to find a permanent spiritual home.

Discover how ParishStaq helps Catholic parishes build a seamless path from first visit to lifelong belonging.

Sources

• Barna Group, “New Barna Data: Young Adults Lead a Resurgence in Church Attendance.” https://www.barna.com/research/young-adults-lead-resurgence-in-church-attendance/
• Leadership Roundtable via Catholic Review, “Survey: Young adults are the most engaged, most at risk of leaving.” https://catholicreview.org/survey-young-adults-are-the-most-engaged-most-at-risk-of-leaving-church/
• Catholic Answers, “No, 90% of Catholics Aren’t Leaving The Church.” https://www.catholic.com/audio/sp/no-90-of-catholics-arent-leaving-the-church
• Midwest Theological Forum, “Why Young People Are Becoming Catholic.” https://theologicalforum.org/why-young-people-are-becoming-catholic/
• Pew Research Center, “Decline of Christianity in the US Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off.” https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/decline-of-christianity-in-the-us-has-slowed-may-have-leveled-off/
• America Magazine, “Gen Z’s Future with the Catholic Church.” https://www.americamagazine.org/editorials/2025/12/11/gen-z-evangelization/
• CARA via St. Louis Review, “Study Shows U.S. Sunday Mass Attendance Near Pre-Pandemic Levels.” https://www.stlouisreview.com/story/study-shows-u-s-sunday-mass-attendance-near-pre-pandemic-levels/
• National Catholic Register, “Welcome Home: Many Dioceses See Sharp Growth in Converts.” https://www.ncregister.com/news/easter-2025-new-catholics-by-the-numbers
• Catholic World Report, “Los Angeles Archdiocese Reports Highest Number of Easter Converts in 10 Years.” https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2025/04/23/los-angeles-archdiocese-reports-highest-number-of-easter-converts-in-10-years/
• Lifeway Research, “Texting: The Underutilized Tool for Churches.” https://research.lifeway.com/2024/08/21/texting-the-underutilized-tool-for-churches/
• Intradyn, “The 2025 Text Messaging Boom.” https://www.intradyn.com/text-message-compliance-insights-2025/
• ResourceUMC, “Using SMS for Church Announcements and Engagement.” https://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/using-sms-for-church-announcements-and-engagement
• Notifyre, “SMS Marketing Statistics 2025.” https://notifyre.com/us/blog/sms-marketing-statistics
• Subsplash, “Church Giving Statistics & Trends to Know in 2025.” https://www.subsplash.com/blog/church-giving-statistics
• Ministry Brands, “Report Shows Church Donations on the Rise.” https://www.ministrybrands.com/news/report-shows-church-donations-on-the-rise
• Pushpay via GlobeNewsWire, “Churches Experience Significant Growth in Engagement and Generosity in 2025.” https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/01/27/3226565/0/en/Churches-Experience-Significant-Growth-in-Engagement-and-Generosity-in-2025-with-Pushpay.html
• Pushpay / Crux, “Top 3 Catholic Church Tech Trends In 2024.” https://pushpay.com/blog/top-three-catholic-church-tech-trends-in-2024/
• Pushpay, “Strategies to Welcome and Engage Newcomers to Your Parish.” https://pushpay.com/blog/how-to-keep-ash-wednesday-and-easter-attendees-coming-back/
• Catholic Leadership Institute, “Reaching the Next Generation” (Via Magazine, Issue 2). https://www.catholicleaders.org/siteimages/Via-Magazine-Issue-2-Spring-2024.pdf
• Church Brand Guide, “Easter Marketing: Church Tips & Strategy for 2025.” https://churchbrandguide.com/seasonal-church-marketing-strategy-leading-up-to-easter/
• Text In Church, “How 15 Texts Increased Church Guest Retention by 56%.” https://textinchurch.com/blog-posts/15-texts-for-guest-retention
• Text-Em-All, “Church Mass Texting Services.” https://www.text-em-all.com/blog/useful-ways-to-use-a-mass-texting-service-for-churches-and-religious-organizations
• ParishSOFT, “How Your Parish Can Use Technology to Promote Easter Sunday.” https://www.parishsoft.com/blog/how-your-parish-can-use-technology-to-promote-easter-sunday
• Dr. Larry Witzel, “The Digital Transformation of Church Communication.” https://larrywitzel.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/The-Digital-Transformation-of-Church-Communication.pdf
• Lifeway / Barna via FODMAP Everyday, “Respect in Church Starts Here.” https://www.fodmapeveryday.com/respect-in-church-starts-here-12-behaviors-to-steer-clear-of/
• Front Row Christian, “Ghosting is Normal Now, Right?” https://frontrowchristian.com/2024/07/21/ghosting-is-normal-now-right/
• CatholicTT, “6 Apps for Your Lenten Journey.” https://catholictt.org/2020/04/01/5-apps-for-your-lenten-journey/

Lent is meant to be a sacred season of recollection, prayer, and penance. But let’s be honest, when you work at a parish, it can sometimes feel less like a season of spiritual renewal and more like a season of stress, endless to-do lists, and administrative penance. 

We know there is so much to get done, and you’ve probably been planning for the Lent and Easter season since before the new year. As you tie up all the loose ends and your team and volunteers prepare for one of your highest attended liturgies of the year, use this last minute checklist to prepare your team to create a positive parish experience for any person who walks through your door. 

Hospitality 

• Confirm that you have enough volunteers to have a strong presence at every Ash Wednesday liturgy. Pushpay’s app-based volunteer management solution is a great way to streamline this process!  
• Work with your communications team to prepare handouts that should be distributed to attendees. A postcard with your parish’s Lenten events and Easter Mass times, or a connect card, with an online form attached via QR code. 

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Liturgy

• Swap those green garments for violet, and replace fresh flowers with dried florals! Lent is here! 
• Ensure that all of your liturgies are covered, and allow your people to swap assignments with each other if needed. 
• Work with your communications team to make sure the proper announcements are read following each Ash Wednesday liturgy. 

Finance Manager + Finance Council 

• Set Ash Wednesday giving goals based on the attendance you expect and previous years’ data. You can use Pushpay’s AI for Giving to quickly gather insights on generosity at your parish if you don’t get to this until the last minute.  
• Make online giving simple and easy by using QR codes or Tap to Give cards in the pews and Online Giving for Parishes, to help you reach those goals! 
• You should also continue to leverage envelopes for those members of your community who count on them! Consider making more envelopes available than usual, as you will likely see higher attendance. Pushpay’s seamless integration with National Church Solutions ensures giving options for traditional and digital givers alike.

Faith Formation 

• Make sure your online calendar featuring upcoming faith formation opportunities is up to date and have clear next steps for parents and parishioners who are interested in signing up.
• If you’re hosting a Lenten Mission, make a registration form available at Ash Wednesday (on a QR code on the pews, a postcard handed out to attendees, or projected on screens) to collect attendees’ RSVPs and information. 
• If possible, make a Lenten resource available to all Ash Wednesday who are looking to go deeper during the Lenten season.
• Invite your volunteers to make themselves available at your parish’s Ash Wednesday liturgies to connect with newcomers and answer questions about faith formation programs at your parish. 

Communications and Marketing 

• Tidy up your parish’s home page and social media channels. These will be seen by more newcomers in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday than usual. Make sure things are clear and attractive! Make Mass times (especially Ash Wednesday Mass times) prominent on your home page and in your social posts. 
• Work with your liturgy team to make sure parish announcements are clear and inviting at the end of each Ash Wednesday liturgy, in order to inform attendees of what’s coming up throughout Lent and Easter.
• Work with your hospitality team to create a plan to connect with newcomers and follow-up with them to invite them to be part of your community. 
• Prepare any unique signage or advertisements that should be displayed (i.e., promotion for a Lenten mission, an upcoming retreat, Lenten fish fries, Confession schedule, or Stations of the Cross times, or connection opportunities). 
• Have a plan for capturing and sharing photo and video content from Ash Wednesday to highlight at the beginning of Lent, and to promote Ash Wednesday in the future.

Whether it’s the end of the Christmas season or the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, keep this checklist handy. Ash Wednesday sets the tone for the whole Lenten season. When it’s thoughtful, prayerful, and well-prepared, it doesn’t just mark the beginning of a new season, it invites your parishioners into a transformative experience. May this year bring your parish’s best Lent yet!

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The family that stopped attending after a funeral, and no one noticed because attendance, bereavement notes, and household records never lined up. The long-time volunteer who was asked three separate times to help with the same ministry because the scheduling tool didn’t sync with the parish database. The faithful parishioner who received an annual giving statement with the wrong envelope number attached, even though they had been supporting the parish for decades.

Those moments carry weight. They also reveal where systems fail the people they’re meant to serve.

That’s why Pushpay’s integration ecosystem exists: to help parishes and dioceses reduce administrative strain so leaders can focus on ministry, not workarounds.

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The quiet cost of disconnected parish systems

When parish systems don’t communicate, the strain shows up quickly:

• Staff time disappears into manual entry, duplicate records, and side spreadsheets
• Offertory data lives apart from parishioner and household profiles
• Communications go out without awareness of sacramental or formation status
• Leaders hesitate because reports don’t reconcile across systems

Anyone who has reconciled a Sunday count sheet, checked it against online gifts, entered it into accounting software, and then tried to match it back to envelope numbers knows how easily small disconnects add up.

None of that helps parishes care for souls or honor the gifts entrusted to them.

Pushpay’s approach is different. Rather than requiring parishes to abandon familiar tools in favor of a rigid, closed platform, Pushpay connects the systems many parishes already depend on. While some all-in-one solutions require dioceses to standardize everything at the expense of local reality, Pushpay works as a hub, allowing data to flow while respecting how parishes actually operate.

An ecosystem shaped around parish life

Pushpay supports 80+ integration partners across core areas of parish and diocesan operations (view the full integrations directory), forming a connected ecosystem that reflects the real rhythms of parish ministry.

That includes:

• Parish and diocesan management systems
• Accounting and finance tools
• Communication and engagement platforms
• Safe Environment and background check solutions
• Stewardship and donor analytics
• Event, facilities, and volunteer management tools
• Media and livestreaming platforms

The goal isn’t more technology. It’s fewer disconnects between the systems parishes already rely on.

Stewardship data where it belongs

Stewardship is relational. It also touches nearly every part of parish operations.

Pushpay’s ParishStaq allows offertory data — including envelopes, online gifts, second collections, and gifts in kind — to flow into parishioner and household profiles without duplicate entry. That connection supports cleaner reconciliation, more accurate Annual Diocesan Appeal tracking, and clearer insight into participation across households.

Instead of maintaining one list for envelopes, another for online giving, and a third for appeal pledges, parish staff can work from a single, consistent record. Pastors gain visibility into stewardship trends without chasing spreadsheets. Parishioners receive accurate acknowledgments that reflect the care behind their generosity.

Communication that reflects real engagement

Communication remains one of the most persistent challenges in parish life.

Pushpay integrations let parishes send messages based on real engagement signals — religious education enrollment, OCIA participation, sacramental preparation status, ministry involvement, or giving history — rather than static lists that quickly fall out of date. A family preparing for First Communion shouldn’t receive the same messaging as a household navigating marriage prep or adult faith formation, yet that distinction is difficult to manage when systems don’t stay in sync.

When data connects across systems, parish communications become more timely, pastoral, and appropriate to where people actually are in their journey.

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Expanding stewardship without adding burden

Stewardship looks different today than it did even a decade ago.

Pushpay integrations support a wide range of giving paths that meet parishioners where they are:

• Online and mobile giving in English and Spanish
• Stock and asset-based giving through partners like Engiven
• Custom QR codes for pews, bulletins, and parish events
• Stewardship insights through donor analytics tools

Each integration expands participation without requiring parish offices to manage additional logins, reconcile separate reports, or re-enter data — an important consideration when the same staff member may be preparing offertory batches, enrolling children in religious education, and answering the parish phone before noon.

Safety, accountability, and trust

Safe Environment practices are essential to parish life.

Pushpay integrates with background check and training partners so volunteer screening, renewals, and compliance fit into everyday workflows rather than living in a separate system that requires constant reminders. When catechists, youth ministers, and volunteers move through screening and training as part of a connected process, parishes reduce risk while maintaining consistency and accountability.

One hub, many partners

Pushpay’s integration philosophy is simple: be the hub, not the bottleneck.

Parishes don’t need technology that forces uniformity at the expense of pastoral reality. They need systems that adapt to different parish sizes, staffing models, and diocesan structures — especially when sacramental records, family profiles, and ministry participation all need to remain connected over time.

That’s why Pushpay combines:

• A Catholic-specific platform through ParishStaq
• An open API that supports flexibility
• Preferred Partners selected for parish relevance
• A growing ecosystem shaped by real parish constraints

Integration work rarely shows up on Sunday. But anyone who has prepared sacramental registers, year-end contribution statements, or diocesan reports knows how critical it is.

Technology should serve the Church’s mission

Parish technology stays in the background, quietly removing obstacles so ministry can flourish.

Pushpay’s Catholic integration ecosystem connects the tools parishes already use, reduces administrative friction, and creates a foundation that can grow with the Church. If you’re curious what’s possible, explore the integrations directory and consider how a more connected system could support your parish or diocese.

The future of parish technology will belong to platforms that remain flexible, connected, and ready to serve — wherever the Church’s mission calls.

As a parish leader, that reality should make your eyes light up, your heart palpitate, and your mind race with engagement ideas! There are two liturgies bookending the Lenten season where you can expect to welcome twice as many people into your community. 

To be clear, the research doesn’t suggest that you need to do anything different. These people will come to you voluntarily, regardless of how you prepare to receive them. The question, then, is what will you do to welcome them and invite them into deeper engagement at your parish? How do you get Ash Wednesday and Easter guests to return, and how do you graft them into the life of your parish community?

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Help them make friends. People are more likely to return if they know someone at the church. Equip your hospitality team (and your general congregation) to be warm and welcoming to newcomers and encourage them to make connections during a post-Mass fellowship opportunity (think the classic Catholic “coffee and donuts” vibe… but maybe water and crackers after Ash Wednesday, or something else. Get creative!). 

Give them a gift. Lent might not be the season of giving, but it is an opportunity your parish has to make itself memorable to visitors. Consider creating or purchasing a Lenten resource for Ash Wednesday—a devotional, a journal with your parish’s logo, or a bookmark with encouragement for the season are all simple ways you can send visitors home with something that will remind them of your parish throughout the Lenten season. You can give Easter Mass attendees a small bottle of holy water, host a post-Mass resurrection party (featuring donuts, of course!), or have an Easter photo booth available after Mass where parishioners and their families can make a memory at your parish while wearing their Sunday best!  

Give them a job or meet a need. If people find a ministry to serve in or belong to at your parish, they’ll have a reason to return. Consider making a postcard or handout available including a brief overview of existing ministries, meeting times and contact information for ministry leaders, and details on how folks can get involved.

Ensure consistent communications with the parish. Guests will evaluate your church by how you communicate with them. Make sure your website, bulletin, and mobile church app communicate consistent information in an engaging manner. Send Ash Wednesday attendees home with a list of any and all Lent and Easter related liturgies and parish activities coming up, and make it prominent on your parish’s home page. Consider placing tap cards or QR codes in your pews to give visitors instant access to your website, app, giving page, etc. 

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Follow up with guests in multiple ways. Let people know that you’re glad they came, and they will want to return. Be sure to invite visitors to fill out a newcomer form so that you can document their information and follow up with them intentionally. Pushpay customers can build forms that will automatically build ChMS people profiles, creating a seamless process for your team to capture information and make connections with newcomers. 

Make things simple. If you want visitors to participate in your church, you’ll need fast, simple, and immediate ways to get involved. Guests have little patience with involvement that seems complicated and confusing. Consider making things like the readings or song lyrics more available and accessible, prepare your hospitality team to help late arrivals easily find a seat, and be sure to make bathrooms and baby changing areas easy to locate!

Equip your regular attendees to be the church to visitors. One of your most effective yet underused strategies for connecting with your visitors and getting them involved in the church is your lay people. Make sure your most involved parishioners are on the same page for how to welcome and involve newcomers, and invite them into the life of your community.

Ash Wednesday and Easter Masses are more than just liturgical highlights—they are opportunities to invite visitors into a closer walk with Jesus within your parish community. With attendance more than double than that of a typical Sunday, these Masses should challenge you to think creatively about hospitality, engagement, and connection. By preparing thoughtfully and equipping your community to welcome others warmly, your parish can transform these high-attendance days into lasting relationships, deepened faith, and a stronger, more vibrant parish life.

Sunday may be behind them, but the week is already full. The music director needs updated volunteer schedules for upcoming Masses. Religious education is waiting on finalized registration lists. A family registered for faith formation last week, but no one is sure whether their payment information is current or if they paid in cash. This isn’t a lack of care or diligence. It’s the reality of parish life built on disconnected systems.

Most parishes didn’t arrive here intentionally. Tools were added gradually to meet real needs. Online giving. Faith formation registration. An event request. A separate system for communications or diocesan appeals. Over time, those practical decisions quietly turned into a complex web of software that staff must hold together manually.

At first, the cost feels manageable. Extra steps. A few workarounds. Staying late to reconcile records. Eventually, it grows into something heavier that impacts parish staff, leadership councils, and the parishioners you’re called to serve.

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Why most parishes are managing ministry with duct tape and spreadsheets

Ask your parish staff how many systems they rely on in a typical week, and the answer is often more than expected. Many parishes are working across five to seven different tools just to keep daily operations running.

A common setup includes:

• Parishioner database 
• A donation platform 
• Sacramental Records 
• Sign up forms 
• A parish website
• Facilities or room scheduling software
• Fundraising software 
• Email 
• Volunteer management software 
• Liturgical planning 

Each tool serves a purpose. The challenge is that most of them don’t communicate with one another.

That disconnect creates ongoing administrative strain. Staff re-enter the same family information across multiple systems. An address change is updated in one place but missed in another. A parishioner signs up to serve, but the information never reaches the ministry leader who needs it.

Manual handoffs increase the risk of errors and inconsistencies. They also consume time. Many parish teams lose hours each week reconciling records, correcting discrepancies, and preparing reports. That’s time taken away from hospitality, formation, and direct service to parishioners.

There’s also an engagement gap that’s harder to spot. You may know a family registered for religious education. But do you know they also increased their weekly donation or signed up to sponsor someone in OCIA? Or that a long-time parishioner quietly stopped attending and hasn’t connected with any ministry in months?

When a parishioners engagement journey lives on multiple platforms, you and your staff are not able to see their full spiritual journey. Parish leaders are left making decisions with partial insight, not because they’re inattentive, but because the systems don’t provide a unified view. These silos are costing your parish.

What software fragmentation is really costing your parish

Disconnected systems don’t just create inconvenience. They introduce costs that accumulate quietly over time.

Staff time and burnout: Administrative work expands to fill the gaps between systems. Tasks that should be straightforward become repetitive and time-consuming. Parish staff are called to serve parishioners, not manage software, yet fragmented tools often demand exactly that.

Missed opportunities for pastoral care: When parishioner involvement data is scattered, it’s harder to recognize patterns. A decline in offertory might signal a family facing hardship. A drop in Mass attendance could indicate illness or disengagement. Without connected data, those signals are easy to miss.

Leadership blind spots: Pastors, parish councils, and finance councils rely on accurate, holistic information to steward resources faithfully. Fragmented systems make it difficult to see trends clearly, measure ministry effectiveness, or plan confidently for the future.

These costs don’t appear neatly on a financial statement, but they shape the health and sustainability of parish life every week.

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A better way: streamlining parish operations through integration

The solution isn’t finding one perfect system that replaces everything else. Most parishes don’t need that, and it’s rarely practical.

A healthier goal is a streamlined core: two to three primary systems designed to work together, supported by integrations that reduce administrative friction. This is where platforms like ParishStaq make a meaningful difference.

ParishStaq brings together essential parish tools like your donation platform, parishioner database and mobile apps into a connected platform. ParishStaq is able to integrate with many platforms your parish utilizes to help alleviate duplicating platforms. For example ParishStaq can integrate with Quickbooks allowing your Financial Director to have a full view of your parish’s financial health. Instead of forcing every function into a single rigid tool, it creates a central hub where data flows reliably across your parish technology.

That kind of intentional integration allows:

• Parishioner and family information to update once and stay consistent everywhere
• Offertory data to connect naturally with attendance, ministry involvement, and faith formation
• Engagement activity to build a unified view of each household’s journey within the parish

In a connected environment:

• Data flows automatically instead of being re-entered
• Staff work from a single source of truth
• Actions in one system trigger updates in others

The benefits extend across parish life. When a family completes OCIA, their records update without manual follow-up. When tithing patterns shift, finance councils have clearer visibility. When ministry involvement changes, parish leaders can respond thoughtfully and in a timely way.

Integration doesn’t remove every layer of complexity. It simply places it where it belongs: behind the scenes, supporting faithful administration rather than adding strain to it.

Where AI brings clarity to complexity

Even when parish systems are connected, many leaders still face a familiar challenge: How do we actually use all this information well without becoming data experts?

This is where Pushpay’s AI capabilities quietly support parish life, not by adding another system to manage, but by making existing tools easier and more intuitive to use.

Within ParishStaq, AI is designed to help staff and clergy ask real ministry questions and receive clear, trustworthy answers. Instead of building complicated filters or requesting custom reports, parish teams can use natural language to surface the information they need.

For example, AI-powered people search in ParishStaq’s ChMS allows staff to type questions like “Which families registered for faith formation but haven’t attended recently?” or “Who has increased offertory this year and is also active in ministry?” The system translates those questions into precise results in seconds. What once required deep familiarity with parish software becomes accessible to anyone on the team.

AI also supports stronger stewardship and financial transparency. With AI for giving data, finance councils and parish leaders can ask straightforward questions about offertory trends and receive immediate visual insights. This allows parishes to respond thoughtfully to changes in generosity, rather than discovering patterns months later in static reports.

The goal isn’t to replace pastoral discernment. It’s to remove the technical barriers that slow it down.

When AI is thoughtfully embedded into an integrated parish platform, it helps:

• Surface insights faster: identify changes in engagement, attendance, or giving without manual reporting.
• Reduce administrative burden: eliminate time spent reconciling data or navigating complex filters.
• Provide pastoral context: view sacramental records, ministry involvement, and stewardship activity together.
• Empower more leaders: make insights accessible to staff, clergy, and council members without specialized training.

AI doesn’t make decisions for your parish. It simply brings the right information forward so your leaders can respond with wisdom, care, and intention.

When parish systems are connected and intelligence supports them, staff spend less time asking, “Where is this information?” and more time asking, “How can we best accompany this family?”

How to move forward without disrupting parish life

Transitioning away from disconnected systems doesn’t have to feel risky or overwhelming. The most sustainable changes usually happen gradually.

Start with staff education: Before introducing new tools, help your team understand the purpose behind integration. Address concerns about training and change. When staff see how their daily work becomes simpler and more reliable, confidence grows.

Demonstrate practical use cases: Show each ministry leader how integration improves their responsibilities. Walk the director of religious education through simplified registration and reporting. Show the Liturgy director how volunteer schedules stay current. Help the OCIA coordinator see event attendance without pulling multiple reports.

Gain leadership alignment: Lasting change requires shared understanding. Pastor support is essential, along with awareness from the parish council and approval from the finance council. Alignment ensures decisions are made with both the leadership’s concerns in mind along with the parishioner’s stewardship journey at heart. The aim isn’t disruption. It’s stability and clarity.

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Imagine a clearer Monday morning

Imagine a Monday morning where parish staff open one dashboard and see the full picture. Which families are engaged. Who may need outreach. Where parish life is flourishing and where attention is needed.

Less time reconciling records. More time welcoming parishioners. Technology that quietly supports ministry instead of complicating it.

Parishes like yours are already streamlining operations and rediscovering the freedom that comes with connected systems.

If you’re curious what that could look like in your parish, see how parishes like yours have streamlined operations or talk with a parish solutions consultant who understands the realities of parish and diocesan life.

The tools you rely on shape the ministry you can sustain. When they work together, your parish is better equipped to serve faithfully, steward resources wisely, and care for your community over the long term.

In the midst of all of this activity, it can be easy for Lent to feel crowded rather than contemplative. A parish mission offers parishioners a way to pause, refocus, and intentionally invite parishioners into the heart of the season—calling them to deeper conversion, renewed faith, and greater connection to the parish community. Here’s how to thoughtfully plan a Lenten parish mission that will have lasting impact for your parishioners and your parish community.

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Start with your why

With your team, take time to work out and clearly articulate why you’re hosting a Lenten parish mission. Having this “why” identified will help keep your team motivated and help inform all the decisions before the mission, and define success as you evaluate it. 

Identify an intentional theme

With your why in mind, take time to prayerfully consider a theme that fits into your parish’s Lenten experience. Consider using the readings for the Sundays of Lent as inspiration. As you do this, think through your parishioners’ needs and wants. What are they most concerned about this Lenten season? How can this theme respond to those things that are most important to them? This theme will not only be important for the content of the actual event, but should also tie into your promotion and followup communications before and after it. 

Choose a format that works for your parish

There are a variety of ways to host a parish mission: a single night talk or a multi-night series, a talk followed by Q&A or a talk followed by praise and worship, an opportunity for small groups or contemplative prayer, featuring a speaker from your community, hired from outside your community, or a video series. Consider how you want this mission to feel and build out a format, schedule, and run-of-show or flow for the event that gives your team confidence as they carry it out. 

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Be thoughtful about your invitation

Don’t let your parish mission get lost in the fullness of the Lenten season. Think through how you can most effectively invite parishioners (and non-parishioners!) to this event. Maybe you share a video of your pastor making an invitation, inspire parishioners to invite newcomers to attend, send printed invitations to parishioners via mail, or post flyers or distribute postcards around local community spaces to spread the word. If appropriate, you can use a form to collect RSVPs and use that to capture data on who plans to attend. 

Follow up to inspire ongoing engagement

A Lenten parish mission can not only be impactful for those who attend, but can also be an opportunity to invite attendees into a deeper engagement with your parish. At the event, think about how you’ll invite folks to continue to journey with your parish community during Lent. Can you connect them with a ministry to participate in, give them a save the date card with Holy Week liturgies or penance service times, or help them join a small group? Try to identify ways you can help attendees dive deeper into the life of your parish community. 

A well planned Lenten parish mission doesn’t need to be elaborate to be effective. When it’s rooted in a clear purpose, shaped by the real needs of your parishioners, and offered with prayerful intention, a mission can be a profound moment, inviting your parishioners to turn their hearts to the Lord, in preparation for Easter. With prayer, clarity, and courage invite your parish into the heart of Lent with a parish mission planned with intention.

Check out this free Easter guide and use our ready-to-use welcome plan to reach out and connect with the new faces at your parish.

At the dawn of a new year, you may find yourself setting new goals and resolutions for your ministry. Maybe you’re trying to reach a new fundraising goal, launch a parish community event, increase religious education registration, or track higher engagement in parish activities beyond Sunday Masses. Whatever’s on your mind, anything that will become a priority in the new year will come at a cost: your time.  

Time is the one non-renewable resource at your disposal. Use it well, and amazing things can happen. When used well, it can lead to remarkable outcomes; when wasted, it’s gone for good.

Assuming you have about 40 hours each week spent in ministry, how many of those hours are actually spent in ministry versus managing ministry? Emails, bulletins, meeting notes, data analysis, hunting down parishioner info, crafting social posts, rewriting the same announcement for the fourth time… none of these are bad or unimportant. But they quietly eat up your most limited resource: time.

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Tools should serve your ministry  

The tools you use in your day-to-day—whether it’s as simple as the stapler used to create religious ed parent packets or as complex as the computer (phone or tablet) you’re reading this on—exist to serve the ministry you carry out, not the other way around. 

The Church has always adopted tools that further ministry impact. Consider the printing press, radio, even YouTube and social media. When used well, your ministry should be more effective, not weighed down by the tools you use. Of course, we should lean on guidance from Pope Leo and Church leadership and explore ethically when it comes to AI, but at the end of the day, the Catholic Church is not afraid of new technology; she’s committed to stewarding the gifts of creation and human ingenuity for the sake of the Gospel.

When leveraged properly, AI can unlock new possibilities and, perhaps most importantly, more time for you to focus on the people, connections, and relationships in the ministry moments that matter most. 

Where AI can actually save your time 

Let’s break down the numbers. If AI helped you save just 30 minutes a day, that earns you back 2.5 hours per week, 10 hours per month, and 120 hours per year. 

That’s three full workweeks handed back to you to do more with your ministry. What would you do with that time? Run an extra week of VBS? Launch a men’s or women’s retreat? Personally check in on your parish’s small groups? Or start parish small groups?! Spend an extra hour each week praying for your parishioners? Take a personal retreat? The possibilities are almost endless. 

Sounds nice, right? So how can you get started? Here are a few ways you can start using AI in the new year and get yourself those three extra weeks: 

Administrative tasks 

It’s unlikely that you got into parish or diocesan work because you get fired up about building spreadsheets or organizing team schedules. Sure, you might have a knack for it, but it’s more likely that that’s the “necessary work” that makes meaningful ministry moments possible. 

Instead of getting bogged down in that work, you could leverage a tool like Chat GPT to do things like create a spreadsheet of names for nametags, create a volunteer schedule for a parish event, or give you pros and cons of different religious education resources. You could also leverage Otter.ai or other note taking apps to take meeting notes, as long as you notify all meeting attendees. 

Drafting copy 

Have you ever stared at a blinking cursor for more than 5 minutes wondering how to get the word out about an upcoming event? Whether it’s an announcement for your bulletin or website, a social media caption, or a weekly e-newsletter blurb, a tool like Chat GPT can quickly help you get the ball rolling on short copy drafts. 

This doesn’t mean AI does all the work for you. It means that you thoughtfully prompt the tool to help you draft a few sentences and carefully review, edit, revise, and publish. It saves you those 5 minutes of wondering what to write and, over time, that adds up to a lot of minutes back in your life! 

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Video editing

If you’re live streaming or recording Masses, you also better be sharing clips from your pastor’s homily each week! This is one of the best ways to stand out and make your parish seem approachable to newcomers. 

With Studio AI from Resi, you can take each Sunday’s homily and allow AI to transform it into short, vertical videos with captions, ready for Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. If you have a goal of higher engagement from your social media, look no further than this tool, which allows you to quickly bring your parish’s voice to the digital space. 

Finding people  

Tracking down groups of people or even specific parishioners based on a set of criteria can eat up more time than you realize. Whether you’re building filters in your ChMS, digging through old email threads or sign up sheets, or asking fellow staff members or volunteers, it shouldn’t be this hard to find who you’re looking for. 

With Pushpay’s AI for People Search, you can easily keep up with every member of your parish and find who you’re looking for in a snap. Use natural language like, “parents of children two or younger,” or “couples with an anniversary next month” to find your people quickly and help you accomplish a variety of tasks. 

Donor management 

What if instead of running reports and exporting data, you could just talk to someone about what’s on your mind when it comes to giving information at your parish? That’s almost what Pushpay’s AI for Giving Data. Sure, you’re not talking to a person, but you’re prompting AI with questions that make sense to you to gain meaningful insights about the generosity among your parishioners. Find answers to simple questions quickly and use the time previously spent on data analysis on meaningful ministry moments.

The new year is a perfect opportunity to resolve to be incredibly intentional with how you spend your time. AI isn’t a replacement for the heart of ministry. It’s a tool to help you reclaim hours currently spent on repetitive tasks, data wrangling, or drafting communications. 

By thoughtfully integrating AI into your workflow you’re not just working smarter, you’re powerfully stewarding your gifts of creativity, energy, and time in service of the Gospel. This year, give yourself the gift of presence. Let technology handle the busywork, and let your heart, your creativity, and your pastoral care take center stage.

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Thoughtful use of AI can simplify the tasks that eat your time, helping you stay present to the quiet moments of ministry you never want to miss.

Here are a few practical ways AI can support your parish in the weeks ahead.

1. Tidy up your bulletin or e-newsletter drafts

Most parishes have plenty of content. What’s missing is the time to polish it. A quick pass through an AI assistant can turn rough notes into a clean, readable draft. Drop in your Mass times, ministry updates, and sacramental listings, then ask for a version that matches your parish’s tone.

You can even request multiple formats: one for print, one for email, and one trimmed for your app. A short final review for accuracy and pastoral nuance keeps everything aligned with your parish voice, without asking you for an extra hour you don’t have.

2. Build volunteer schedules and send reminders without the scramble

During Advent, events like rehearsals, penance services, and liturgical ministries all seem to overlap. Scheduling can swallow half a day. AI can take your list of names, roles, and availability and produce a draft schedule you only need to fine-tune.

Pair your AI practices with ParishStaq’s communication tools. Group texts, email reminders, and automated alerts will make sure volunteers see the right details at the right time.

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3. Create and share homily clips from your Sunday stream

Many parishioners revisit your homilies mid-week for encouragement, especially during Advent. If you’re streaming, clipping a short segment is simple. AI can help you title the clip, write a brief description, or highlight a memorable line.

Through your parish app, those clips land where people already go for Mass times, events, and devotional content. It’s an easy way to support parishioners who missed Sunday or want to pray with the message again.

4. Draft captions and social posts that feel like your parish

A quick photo from a Christmas event at your parish can become a moment of connection. AI can help you write the first pass of a caption. Be sure to keep the message warm, pastoral, and consistent with your parish voice. Guide it with simple prompts about tone or audience, then make a few small edits to keep it authentic.

You’ll spend far less time staring at a blinking cursor and more time capturing the moments worth sharing.

5. Let AI handle meeting notes while you stay present

Pastoral councils, Advent outreach planning, liturgy prep and other such meetings deserve your full attention. Instead of toggling between listening and typing, use an AI note-taker to capture action items and questions. Later, you can paste the transcript into an assistant to generate summaries, task lists, or next-step suggestions.

ParishStaq gives you a place to store those notes or fold them into workflows so follow-up stays organized across your team.

Staying centered on what Advent offers

Nothing replaces the sacred conversations that unfold this time of year—the quiet confessions, the first-time visitors searching for a way home, the families lighting candles together for the first time. That work is yours.

But the administrative load that keeps you away from it can be lightened. With AI and the tools already in your ParishStaq ecosystem, you can reclaim the hours you need to lead, welcome, and shepherd your people toward the Nativity.

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