What happens when the Bishop comes to your parish?

After the final blessing, the adults headed into the hall for a cold drink. One of the young altar servers sat down at the piano and began to play. It was his birthday, and he had chosen to spend it serving at the closing Mass of his deanery’s visitation.

For Carrie Ann, that’s not a coincidence. Her parish, Our Lord Jesus Christ Eternal High Priest by Rutland Water, sits in an area with no Catholic secondary school. So the Parish Mission Team she helps lead has decided to put its energy into children and teenagers first. “Because the children are the future, aren’t they?” she said, when asked why that step before any other.

They now run a youth club for ages 11 and up, and they hope it will grow into something wider. “We can become a community hub,” she said, a place the surrounding neighbourhood comes to know.

That small, concrete choice is exactly what the diocese is asking of every parish. Bishop Patrick McKinney’s five-year plan, Go, Make Disciples, invites each parish to pick a few simple steps toward becoming more missionary. The aim is to help people encounter God’s love, grow as disciples, and carry that faith into daily life.

To support and encourage that, the Bishop and his Vicars General, his most senior priests, have begun a two-year round of weekend parish visits. This Mass marked the end of the first deanery’s turn: South Lincolnshire.

Inside the church earlier that evening, five parishes had each been given a single minute to say what they intend to do next. People clapped in support of one another’s plans. Bishop Patrick, who has spent recent weeks visiting these parishes, listened from the front. “We’ve met with an emerging mission team or a pastoral council team that might break off and become a mission team,” he said. “Ideas are emerging, in every parish.”

What pleased him most was watching parishes borrow and learn from one another, people hearing an idea and thinking, “Oh, we never thought of that one.” “Which is the purpose, really,” he said. “We want to share any good plans that emerge, let’s share them throughout the diocese.”

The Vicar General, Canon Eddy Jarosz, had visited two of the deanery’s parishes himself. What struck him most was the spread of ages and backgrounds in the pews. “You can tell by the faces that come from different parts of the world, and that’s really encouraging and inspiring,” he said.

In Carrie Ann’s parish, one effort they call Practical Catholicism simply asks people to offer whatever they can. “‘People just don’t come and volunteer sometimes,” she said, “but we’ve found such great enthusiasm.”

What moved her most was what the parish visitation did to the team itself. “A group of us has come together that possibly wouldn’t have done otherwise,” she said. This was the first deanery in the diocese to complete the visitation process, and the Bishop had seen the same thing across each parish he visited. “Lots of excitement, lots of hope,” he said.

The Bishop and his Vicars General move on to Northern Lincolnshire this weekend, and over two years they will reach every parish in turn. For a parish still waiting, the visit is less an inspection than a conversation. There’s a time of prayer, open to anyone who’d like to come, and Mass with the Bishop or a Vicar General. Then comes a relaxed meeting with the parish’s mission team about the steps they’re taking to become more missionary and the help or support they might need.

To those still waiting, Canon Eddy had a simple message: “Please look forward to it, because we’re looking forward to coming to see you.” Carrie Ann put it more simply: “If you haven’t done it, you need to just give it a go. It is daunting, but it’s worth it.”

The vision behind all of this is set out in the diocese’s five-year plan, Go, Make Disciples. It takes about twenty minutes to read, and there’s a handy parish summary too. You’ll find both at www.gomakedisciples.uk. And if you are not sure where to begin, or you’d like help shaping your parish’s plan, there is someone to talk to about this. Joe Hopkins, the diocese’s Director of Adult Formation for Mission, would be glad to hear from you at joe.hopkins@dioceseofnottingham.uk.