Optimal size of parish - "mega-church"

[Loud-living-dogma]

This question occurred to me as I was reading another thread.
Is there a guideline as to when a diocese would build another parish in a heavily populated area? As opposed to, say just adding another priest / more Masses at already busy parish.
I wonder if there are guidelines, say, once a parish has 7,500 people, then it’s time to build another parish (or 10,000 people, etc.). I suppose this would vary according to the diocese, of course.
I just wonder, because it seems that in my diocese we hardly ever build a new church, but certain big suburban parishes grow ever bigger. Once you are up to 5-6 Masses a weekend, and they have to worry about emptying the parking lot in good time, etc - - it has the feel of a “mega-church” to me. As in, you have no idea who else attends the parish, it’s so big there may not be a feeling of community.
ALSO, I wonder if there were more strict guidelines, say before Vatican II? I don’t think they had Saturday Masses then, so that would have knocked out 25% of people that could attend in a weekend. It’s just seemed like there were a lot more, and smaller, parishes then. Of course I know that suburbanization / white flight have changed all that.
Thanks for any help!

 

[Bob_Crowley]

I can’t help you much as I’ve never belonged to a mega-Church, and I tend to just stay where I am until it becomes clear God wants me to move somewhere else. I’m also laity, and certainly not involved in church planning.

I do remember my old Protestant pastor saying once that when a congregation has about 150 regular members, that’s about the glass ceiling for a single pastor, and he needs to get assistance, on a part time basis at least.

I don’t know what criteria the Catholic Church uses to make decisions on when another parish or church needs to be established, but I think there’d be some quite secular criteria as well as religious eg. finance, demographics (suburban populations start young, grow older, and then decline as they age. Then the young ones move back in and it starts all over again), the need for another school (my observation is that in Australia there is nearly always a school or two associated with a parish), availability of priests to service a new parish, availability of suitable zoned land etc.

If you really want to know, why not just send a letter to your local Diocesan office outlining your concerns, and asking for advice on what factors they have to take into account in regards to establishing new churches. That way you’d be getting the advice straight from the horse’s mouth, and it would be relevant to your particular situation.

 

[commenter]

I don’t think Vatican II changed the size guidelines, but in my diocese most city parishes were developed before the automobile became common. The ideal was that most people (and school children) live in walking distance, which could be quite a walk for that hardy generation.

Many parishes were developed in isolated villages, where you had a concentration of Catholics in a small area, surrounded by farms or wilderness. So the parish size would correspond to that village, big or small.

The suburban parishes were a response to the sprawl of the 1950s and later. The priest shortage meant that the diocese did not have priests to assign to new parishes, starting around 1970. They closed some greatly shrunken city parishes, but not enough, IMHO, to free up a few priests, to help out in the huge suburbans.

The problem is that you have enormous city churches, built to hold 1000 people, where they might get 50 total on the weekend. The buildings are often quite beautiful, but you have to look at what the diocese is not doing, in order to keep those city parishes open - in terms of money, and in terms of assigning a priest there. In many cases, they are in the middle of the inner city, but most of their supporters are older people who live in the suburbs.

Meanwhile, the parish with 5000 families grows to 6000 families, hoping to hold onto 3 priests.

 

[dconklin]

I am on staff at a parish with 4200 families. They way towns are laid out around here, there is no place to logically add another parish. A few years ago we simply opened a bigger church.

 

[Anne1964]

In my Diocese we have a parish with over 20,000 parishioners. Some of them now have Sunday Mass in rented space while fundraising to build another church.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I’m personally a big believer in local parishes at the heart of a community but I get that the priest shortage is a real problem and larger parishes which people commute to can be the only option.

As for size, some of the bigger ones do sound a bit like conveyor belts for communion but I guess having a small group ministry could overcome this. The advantage with a bigger congregation could be a better variety of different people so more people can find a suitable group for them rather than a small parish which tend to just be retired people and young families. Likewise potentially more people to volunteer.

 

[Augustinian]

A large church , “mega” if you will, has the advantage of being able to offer a lot more to the people. A parish grade school and high school, different organizations,clubs activities for youths, tough to do it all with just a few hundred families.

As far as “Adding more masses”, it usually isn’t a problem, a large church complex can deploy a second priest to the school auditorium or a chapel on the grounds if need be.

 

[FaithfulKnight]

Recently while traveling I had the opportunity to attend Mass here. Compared to the approx. 400 families in my home parish, where average Mass attendance on Sunday is 150-175, I felt a little overwhelmed.

 

[Joe_5859]

There are no universal guidelines in this respect that I am aware of. It’s ultimately going to be up to the local bishop to determine when and where to open a new parish, and I imagine that there are a lot of variables to be considered.

Different parts of the country are in vastly different places in this regard. Some parts of the country are experiencing decline in demographics (whether in the population of practicing Catholics, the general population, or both). These areas are closing parishes and seldom opening new ones.

Then there are parts of the country where the population is exploding and they can’t seem to build new parishes fast enough. I know in at least some of these places, the general philosophy seems to be fewer, larger parishes. This makes sense in the present day as we have a far greater access to transportation than in generations past, and also a decline in the number of priests.

Whatever the size of the parish, steps need to be taken so that people don’t feel “lost” among the crowd. Even in gigantic parishes, there needs to be plenty of opportunities for people to find smaller groups within the parish that they can connect with and gain that sense of community. Will some people still float in and out largely disconnected from everyone else in the parish? Sure. But that can happen regardless of the parish size. It’s certainly not what we want, and we need to do our best to reach out to those people.