You stare at the calendar for September, and among all the "starting back meetings" that litter every evening of your week, you see one that maybe you forgot about until now:

The parish council.

So you start drafting up the agenda with "keeping people up to date" items that happened over the summer and groan. This could very easily just be an email.

You anticipate all of the blank faces and "That sounds great!" unengaged reactions. How do you foster discussion and participation so you make the group actually worth everyone's time?

There is so much potential that churches often miss in their parish councils: they can be so much more than just a sounding board. They can be a really valuable group that gives you insights not just into the parish, but the entire community.

One of my favorite exercises to run with parish councils is around character personas, and it always gets people engaged and talking, while giving you super valuable information to use in your parish outreach.

Here's how to run the exercise.

Step One:

Prior to the meeting, come up with a "persona" (fictional character) for each parish council member to represent. Each persona should represent a different stage of interaction with your parish or different types of audiences you have. Here's some examples to get you started (alliteration just makes this more fun):

• Involved Ingrid — typical "church lady" who is retired and involved in all the church ministries
• Frazzled Franny — busy mom whose kids go to religious ed and show up to Mass every week, but that's about it
• Questioning Quinn — someone who is just exploring faith
• Sacrament Sally — the family you only see when they need a sacrament
• Moved In Molly — new to the area
• Weekend Will — he attends Mass every Sunday faithfully, but leaves out the side door as soon as it's over and doesn't interact with anyone or express any interest in getting more involved

There are tons of opportunities here — think about different age groups, life circumstances, levels of faith, families, and all the ways people might interact with your parish.

(My favorite we ever did was with my parish, which connects to the grocery store parking lot next store. We named one of the personas "Acme Annie" to represent people in the community who pass our church every day on the main road but don't actually come in or have any other relationship with us.)

Step Two:

At the council meeting, assign each person one of the personas and get them to think about some of the following:

• What are the impressions your persona has of our church? How would they describe us? What do they like about us and what do they not like about us?
• Where are they in their faith journey?
• What do we have that would serve them?
• What would the next step in their involvement with the parish be?

Step Three:

Have each person go around and discuss what they answered, and encourage other council members to share their thoughts, especially if they know someone who meets that persona.

Step Four:

Decide on three main personas you want to focus on cultivating this coming year. Have the group brainstorm some ways you can interact with this group more — it could be specific events, communication materials that need to be developed, etc.

The Goal:

The point of this exercise is twofold: First, you can get some perspective about different audiences you might not have thought about before. Make sure to collect all of these notes for the future!

But second, it also gets your council members to start thinking about other audiences besides themselves. Stereotypically, parish council members tend to be more involved in the parish already, but if we're constantly thinking through that "super involved" lens, we get tunnel vision and only think through parish initiatives at that level, when there are many other groups that you likely serve and want to see grow.

You might even get people so engaged with their persona that they volunteer to help lead some of those events or communications!

Here's some other ways to take this exercise further:

• Challenge each council member to speak to someone who fits their persona before the next meeting about faith, their impression of your parish, etc.
• Assign the personas for the entire council year and encourage them to advocate on behalf of their persona as you discuss various church efforts throughout the year. For example, how would "Mary (Only Shows at) Christmas" react to this parish initiative? What questions would she have or what would her specific needs be with it?

So, go ahead and put this on the agenda for an upcoming parish council meeting, and reply back once you do it and let me know how it goes!

For His greater glory,

Emily

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