Pick any secular leadership podcast. Read any book on how to be a great leader. Follow any leadership guru. They all agree on one thing: efficient scalability is the key to growth. If you're not familiar with the term, scalability is the system or strategy that handles growth without compromising profit, performance, or quality. Build it once, run it again and again, get bigger results without proportionally bigger costs.

It's the operating logic of the modern world. And in many areas of the Catholic Church, we have absorbed it almost without noticing. We have especially absorbed it in how we run parishes.

But how parishes have absorbed scalability doesn't start with parish strategy. It starts well before that — when the pain points show up.

A parish leader feels them: not enough people in the pews, not enough money, not enough young people, not enough involvement outside of Mass. Those pain points trigger a response in leaders, who quite naturally try to do something about them. But most leaders only know how to strategize around what they already know about, what they're familiar with, and what falls within their threshold of risk tolerance. So they reach for what other parishes have done. They run a new program. They host a new event. They launch a new initiative. They roll out a pastoral plan the diocese is teaching, or buy into the next packaged solution being marketed at the conferences.

Too few do what Jesus and the Apostles actually did.

Because what Jesus and the Apostles actually did looks nothing like what most parishes do today.

JESUS’ STRATEGY WAS INEFFICIENT

Jesus had the biggest problem any leader has ever faced. He had to save every human, of every time and place, from sin and death. The scope of his mission makes our parish problems look microscopic.

If anyone needed scalability, it was Jesus.

So what did he do?

He spent roughly 74% of his three years of public ministry with twelve men. He knew their names. He ate with them, traveled with them, prayed with them, argued with them, forgave them, sent them out, brought them back, and corrected them. He invested in a handful of people so deeply that those people could turn around and do the same with others, who could do the same with still others, until the world was reached.

He didn't write a book (or a blog like this one). He didn't build an institution. He didn't roll out a program, a curriculum, or an event series. He didn't leave a marketing plan.

He just made disciples. Slowly. Relationally. One at a time or one family at a time.

By every modern leadership metric, this is wildly inefficient. No board would approve it. No donor would fund it (and why fundraising for trying it today is still hard). No consultant would recommend it. And yet it is the single most fruitful strategy in human history.

This is the strategy missing from most of our parishes.

In place of it, we have programs, events, and classes — which can scale at some level, but produce little of what Jesus actually came to produce. We need to move toward what Jesus modeled. There are three principles that mark the way. Before I get to those, let me say that marketing, efficiencies in operations, programs, etc. - are NOT the problem. It is doing those things IN PLACE of what Jesus did.

3 PRINCIPLES OF RENEWAL BASED ON JESUS & THE APOSTLES

These three principles below are exactly the weak points and gaps in our parishes today. We are not good at any of them at the parish level. They are also, by modern standards, deeply inefficient.

That is precisely why they work.

1. Consistent Discernment — built on prayerful individuals as part of prayerful leadership teams.

The normal operating procedure of most Catholic institutions is to make plans and then ask God to bless them. We treat prayer as the opening Hail Mary and closing Our Father bookending a meeting that was always going to land where the loudest voice in the room wanted it to land.

That is not discernment. That is decision-making with a religious frame.

Real discernment is something else. It is a slow, prayerful, communal process of asking God what he wants — and being willing to be told something other than what you walked in believing. The Catholic tradition has rich resources for this, especially the Ignatian framework of communal discernment, which assumes deep individual prayer, extended group prayer, honest discussion, attention to consolation and desolation, and a willingness to wait for clarity instead of forcing it.

This is inefficient by every modern leadership standard. It refuses to be rushed. It demands prayer before plans. It requires leaders who actually pray — daily, personally, intimately. It produces no quarterly metrics. It cannot be optimized. It will frustrate anyone who walks into a room hoping to get something checked off a list.

But here is the thing: a leadership team that has actually discerned together is a leadership team that can act with unity, conviction, and courage. A team that has skipped this step will be blown apart by the first hard decision they face — because they were never truly together to begin with.

You cannot lead renewal from a team that hasn't first let God lead them.

2. Intentional Community — built on relationships forged in purpose and vision.

The most common request I hear from Catholics looking for more is some version of, "I want a real community." The most common response Catholic parishes give is some version of, "Here are our programs."

These two things are not the same, while they may barely be related.

Programs gather people in a room. Community happens between people who have decided to actually walk with one another toward something. Programs are scalable. Community is not. Programs run on a schedule. Community runs on time, trust, and shared mission — none of which can be accelerated.

The early Church knew this. They lived it. They met in homes. They ate together. They argued, forgave each other, served side-by-side, and held one another accountable. They did not have programs. They had each other. And out of that messy, slow, shared life, the Gospel went to the ends of the known world.

Intentional community is inefficient because it doesn't scale, can't be replicated cleanly from one parish to another, and demands that leaders themselves be in real, vulnerable relationships with one another before asking parishioners to do the same. It also requires choosing depth with a few over breadth with many — which always feels backwards in an institution that measures success by attendance.

But this is what Jesus modeled. He had three (Peter, James, John). Inside of twelve. Inside of seventy-two. Inside of a wider crowd of disciples. He went deep with a few so that they could go wide with many. We have inverted this. We try to go wide first and hope depth shows up later. It almost never does.

3. Pastoral Skill-building — built on better evangelization and growing disciples into maturity and mission.

Most Catholic leaders today have been formed for a Church that no longer exists. Seminaries, grad schools, and continuing education programs have largely trained leaders in catechesis, sacramental administration, program management, and pastoral care for those already in the pews. These are real skills, and they matter.

But they are not the skills the present moment demands.

The skills we need now - and the skills most Catholic leaders simply do not have - are the ones Jesus modeled most clearly. Knowing how to start a real spiritual conversation with someone who isn't already Catholic. Knowing how to ask, listen, assess, and respond, rather than launching into apologetics. Knowing how to read where someone actually is in their journey toward Christ. Knowing how to proclaim the kerygma and invite a response. Knowing how to walk with a new disciple through the messy years of formation. Knowing how to apprentice another leader, the way Jesus apprenticed his.

These skills cannot be installed by a workshop, downloaded from a curriculum, or delegated to a program. They are formed slowly, in real life, by leaders who already have them helping leaders who don't. They are caught more than taught. They take time.

That is profoundly inefficient.

It is also the only way it has ever worked.

WHERE PARISHES SHOULD START

If you've read this far and the diagnosis lands for you, the natural next question is, "Okay bald guy - where do we start?"

A warning before I answer: the temptation is going to be to start at the parish level. Roll something out. Launch a new initiative. Cast a vision from the pulpit. This is exactly the move that has failed parish after parish for two generations.

Programs do not transform parishes. Only transformed leaders do.

So start with your leadership team — not the whole parish.

Specifically:

• Begin with real prayer. Not the bookend kind. Actual extended team prayer, weekly at minimum. If your team cannot pray together for thirty minutes, you do not yet have a team that can lead renewal. That is not a judgment; it is a starting point.

• Build trust before strategy. Trust is the hardest obstacle in team formation, and it cannot be skipped. A team that does not trust one another will not be honest with one another, and a team that is not honest with one another cannot discern together.

• Get honest about your own pastoral skills. Not the skills your job description requires, but the skills the mission actually demands. Can you proclaim the kerygma to a stranger? Can you accompany a new disciple? Can you apprentice another leader? If the answer is "not really," that is okay — but it has to be named. You cannot form others in skills you have not formed in yourself.

• Choose a few before you try to reach the many. Pick a few people in your parish who could become the next layer of disciple-makers, and invest in them the way Jesus invested in the twelve. Not as a program. As a way of life.

It is also the only thing that has ever actually renewed a parish.

A FINAL WORD - AND AN INVITATION

The Catholic Church in the West is not going to be renewed by a better program, a slicker marketing campaign, a more polished pastoral plan, or a more efficient operating model (though all those things are good things we SHOULD use). 

We will be renewed when leaders rediscover what Jesus actually did — and have the courage to do it themselves.

Discernment that takes time. Community that doesn't scale quickly. Pastoral skills built one disciple at a time.

Inefficient by every modern measure. Faithful to the only One whose strategy has ever actually saved the world.

If your leadership team is ready to do this kind of deep work — not another program, but a real reorientation around the three principles above — we would love to talk to you.

CMD Cohorts is currently taking applications from parish leadership teams ready to dive deep into implementing what this post lays out. This is not a curriculum, not a video series, not a packaged program. It is sustained coaching of your team, over time, in exactly the three principles named here.

If that is what your parish needs, reach out to us.

Renewal is worth the time, the effort, and the patience.

So is your parish.