A parish is transformed by leaders who understand their people.
CliftonStrengths helps parish priests, pastoral teams and volunteers recognize their natural gifts, so they can more easily find service that fills them up instead of draining them.
80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. And that 20% often burns out.
Gallup has long measured engagement in church communities, and the result is often similar. Only about a quarter of parishioners are actively engaged. The remaining three quarters stay on the sidelines. Not because they do not want to get involved. But because they do not know their gifts and have no idea how to use them in service to the parish community.
The result? An overloaded parish priest who carries everything alone. Volunteers fill the gaps where hands are missing, not where they could naturally shine. And so service drains them rather than filling them up.
Sound familiar?
"Every parish faces a fundamental choice: to care for those who come, or to go after those who do not. Most parishes have never consciously made this choice. And so they stay in maintenance mode, even while speaking the language of mission."
Where CliftonStrengths works in the church
Experience from parishes abroad shows that the best results come from three concrete ways of using CliftonStrengths, which parishes choose according to their needs and situation.
The parish priest and the parish council
The parish priest and three to six key people. Change begins in the inner leadership of the parish, and that is where it has the greatest impact. A strong team is not made of people who are alike, but of people who naturally complement one another.
That is exactly why for such a team we recommend doing the full talent profile: finding the complete ranking of all talent themes, an analysis with a facilitator, and identifying where talents in the team overlap, where they complement each other, and where the team has blind spots. In Divine Renovation, James Mallon reminds us that the team around the parish priest should not be a mirror of his personality, but its counterweight.
- →The parish priest stops firefighting and starts leading
- →The team helps shape the vision, not just carry out assigned tasks
- →Everyone knows what they are naturally strong at and where they need others
Why start with leadership
When you introduce new activities and events in a parish but the parish priest and his team stay the same, the change does not last long. When leadership is transformed, sooner or later everything else follows.
before a parish transformation becomes visible
people in the first round, the inner leadership of the parish
A typical process in a parish
Engaging parishioners and volunteers
For a parish to work well and grow, it needs a variety of gifts. And in parishes those are usually not missing, people have them. What is missing is being able to recognize them and find the right service for them.
When a gift meets a service that fits it, both sides benefit: a person serves out of what they are good at and what fills them up, and the parish gets exactly what it needs.
The proven approach from parishes abroad looks like this: map the talents, go through them in small groups, recognize gifts and calling in them, and connect them to concrete service. The result is more engaged people and volunteers who serve with energy and enthusiasm, not out of duty.
Formation of priests and pastoral workers
A priest leads people, and can only lead them well when he knows himself. He needs to know which talent themes help him lead most naturally, what he is strong at and where his weaker spots are. And he needs to know the weaknesses just as well as the strengths: this is how he knows who to bring onto the team to complement him right there.
When he builds on his gifts, he finds his own style of leadership. He comes across as natural and draws energy from service instead of being drained by it. That is exactly what the human formation of priests rests on in programs such as the Catholic Leadership Institute or Called for More. In them CliftonStrengths serves self-knowledge, finding a style of leadership, keeping healthy boundaries and preventing overload.
- →A way of leading rooted in who the priest truly is
- →Preventing burnout through conscious management of energy
- →Openness to accepting help from others where it is needed
Natural formation, not an HR method
CliftonStrengths in the formation of priests is not about performance and pressure toward perfection. It is about a priest becoming aware of how he naturally works, and being able to turn that insight into better leadership, healthier relationships and a more faithful response to his calling.
How it worked elsewhere
CliftonStrengths has been used in the Catholic Church for years, and it is no passing fashion. There are specific parishes that went through a real transformation thanks to it.
New York, USA
St. Gerard Majella
Diocese of Rockville Centre, Msgr. Bill Hanson
One of the first three parishes in the USA to reach for Gallup's tools for church communities. It brought together three things: stewardship (the awareness that our gifts are entrusted to us by God), engaging parishioners, and CliftonStrengths, which helps name those gifts. More than 800 people joined small groups focused on talents.
The case is described in the book Growing Engaged Churches (Gallup Press)
Charlotte, USA
St. Matthew Catholic Church
North Carolina
"Living Your Strengths" is a program built on CliftonStrengths and adapted to the church setting. It helps people discover their gifts from God and put them to use in the life of the parish. At St. Matthew they did not turn it into a one-off workshop but into a lasting parish ministry: six weeks of work in small groups with guides, which the parish offers again and again. After nine years of their own experience, today they help launch the same program in other parishes and church organizations too.
The strongest indicator of success: the program survived for years and became part of the parish's identity. Many initiatives disappear after the first series of workshops. Here it became a lasting ministry.
Atlanta, USA
Saint Brigid Catholic Church
Georgia
Saint Brigid is proof that CliftonStrengths does not have to feel corporate. Here they call the talents "gifts from God" and connect them to all of life, personal, professional and spiritual. The assessment becomes a path to knowing oneself and to deepening one's faith.
"It helped me understand everything God has placed in me. I would wish it for young people too, so they can deepen their relationship with Christ." Program leader, Saint Brigid.
Canada
Diocese of Montreal
Parish Vitality pilot project
Montreal moved CliftonStrengths from a single parish to the level of an entire diocese. In 2019, 70 people from 16 parishes went through the "Live Your Strengths" workshop. And it was not just a one-off motivational day, but the first of five steps in the official Parish Vitality initiative, whose goal is a shared renewal of parish life.
Proof that CliftonStrengths can transform an entire diocese, not just a single local community.
"The laity are not helpers of priests. They are co-bearers of Christ's mission. To be able to carry it, they must know how they are gifted. And our task as pastors is to help them with that."
What you are probably wondering
Isn't CliftonStrengths too corporate for a parish?
It is a fair question. The method itself is neither church nor corporate, it all depends on how you take hold of it. The parishes where it proved itself translated it into the language of gifts from God, calling and service. What came out was not corporate training, but a tool that helps recognize what natural tendencies toward service and relationships God has placed in you.
Aren't there some theological risks here?
CliftonStrengths does not pigeonhole anyone by personality, does not examine spiritual gifts and does not set psychological diagnoses. It only describes how a person naturally thinks, what they feel and how they act. Everyone can then look at that through the lens of their own faith. From the perspective of the Catholic Church, these natural tendencies are not chance, but gifts from God that we are meant to accept and develop.
What specifically does a parish get out of it?
It depends on where you start. With parish leadership: the parish priest and his coworkers find out what they are strong at and where they complement each other, and individuals become a team. With parishioners: people find service that fits them. More of them get involved and fewer burn out. With priests and pastoral workers: a priest gets to know himself better, leads with greater confidence and more easily guards against overload.
What to choose: the five strongest themes, or all 34?
For parishioners and volunteers in the first wave, the five strongest themes are usually enough, it is cheaper and plenty for group work. For the inner leadership around the parish priest we recommend the complete profile of all 34 themes. Only with it will you see where the team has gaps and how it really complements itself.
Where to start?
Almost always with the inner leadership: the parish priest and two to five key people. It only makes sense to go to the parishioners once the team knows its talent themes and can work with them. Otherwise it will be a nice experience that no one remembers a year later.
