On-going data collection is crucial for successful pastoral planning
Data gathering offers councils the opportunity to gather factual materials about their environment.
This kind of information can help give substance to a pastoral plan, making it responsive to the actual situation and not simply to the felt perceptions of a group.
From this base, it is possible to assess strengths, weaknesses, needs and directions.
The information should be shared regularly with parishioners and reviewed or updated periodically.
Parish statistics
Each year the parish submits to the diocese a record of various statistics. It is helpful to compare the past five or ten years to see if the parish is growing, declining, maintaining itself or changing.
These records can provide information such as:
- Mass attendance and schedule
- Sacramental statistics
- Parish census figures (numbers of families, widowed persons, those living alone)
- School attendance (Catholic and public)
- Religious education attendance
- Pastoral responsibilities for hospitals, nursing homes or other facilities
- Parish staffing
- Liturgical, educational and service ministries
- Active parish organizations
- Activities and traditions
- Fundraising efforts
- Parish financial statements
- Average giving picture
- Budget and indebtedness
- Building condition, maintenance costs
Review of larger community
This type of information is available through agencies such as county planning offices, the Chamber of Commerce, school boards, the telephone company, zoning boards or regional development offices.
They have information such as:
- Total current population of the local area
- Population projections
- Income and employment statistics
- Types and number of housing units
- Ethnic information
- Total school age population
- Names of civic and service organizations
Other information
In addition to these two types of information, it is also helpful to discover any ecumenical involvement, inter-parochial collaboration, sharing of resources, or cooperative agreements involving the parish. This might reflect such things as:
- A deanery or regional youth group
- Shared responsibility for a homeless shelter, food pantry or clothing store
- Participation in interfaith worship and service projects
- Combined religious education programs involving two or more parishes
- Shared parish staff, such as a parish social minister or evangelization director
- Coordinated training for liturgical ministries