Six years ago, the Diocese of Pittsburgh made a decision that still shapes everything we do at St. Benedict the Moor. Our parish was established — or rather, re-established — as a mission parish with a diocesan-wide charism: to evangelize African Americans and to bring the gifts of Black Catholic heritage into the full life of the Church. That is not a footnote in our history. It is the headline.

Six years in, it seems like a good time to pause and ask: what does that mission actually look like in practice? How do we get from a beautiful calling to concrete, day-to-day parish life? This bulletin series is our attempt to answer that question together. Over seven installments, we will walk through what we are calling the Six Pillars of Evangelization — a framework for how St. Benedict the Moor intends to live its mission in the years ahead.

But before we get to the pillars themselves, we need to start with a distinction that will run through this entire series. It is the difference between maintenance and mission.

A parish in maintenance mode asks: Can we keep what we have going? Are the same people showing up? Is the budget balanced? Are the ministries that existed last year still running this year? These are not bad questions. They are necessary questions. But if they are the only questions we are asking, we have already lost the thread.

A parish in mission mode asks something harder: Is our life together actually forming disciples? Are seekers finding a home here? Is the Gospel becoming visible — not just preachable, but visible — in how we worship, how we serve, how we treat our neighbors, and how we tell our own stories? Is the whole of parish life centered on Christ?

The shift from maintenance to mission is not a program. You cannot buy it, schedule it into a committee meeting, or achieve it with a new logo. It is a conversion — a gradual turning of the entire community toward the question that has always mattered most: What is God calling us to become?

The Six Pillars are our answer to that question at this moment in our parish's life. They are: Liturgical Inculturation, Catholic Schools, Charitable Outreach, Health Ministry, Synodal Listening, and the 12-Month Evangelization Blueprint. Each pillar names a dimension of parish life that, when it is working well, helps St. Benedict the Moor become more deeply Eucharistic, more culturally confident, more hospitable, more charitable, more pastorally responsive, and more committed to forming disciples.

They are not six separate programs running in six separate lanes. They are six expressions of one mission. And that mission has a name: evangelization.
In the installments ahead, we will look at each pillar in turn — what it means, why it matters, and what it looks like when it is bearing fruit. We begin next week with the pillar that touches everything else: how we worship.

--- Fr. Matthew Hawkins