Catholic Leadership Institute gathered 100 bishops, priests, diocesan officials, parish leaders and authors/thought leaders (Sherry Weddell, Matthew Kelly, etc) to a 2-day “think tank” on parish engagement which produced some initial hypotheses. CLI then took a smaller group of the same constituents and crafted the survey. After that, CLI shared the survey with 15 bishops for feedback and edit. The survey was first administered in 2014 and to date has received more than 600,000 responses.

We take parishioners’ confidentiality very seriously. We want them to provide honest feedback. No one in the diocese or on your parish staff - including the pastor - will have access to individual parishioner responses.  Survey responses are anonymous and confidential.

The primary purpose of the tool is to create a snapshot of the whole parish. In the first two years of piloting, the DMI did allow for write-in comments. The feedback from parish leaders were that often these comments were addressing very personal, individual issues with the parish that while at times legitimate, pulled the focus away from reviewing the parishioner community as a whole. Additionally, the anonymity provided often resulted unfortunately in hurtful personal attacks and rarely helpful feedback. 

The survey will most likely be completed by people who are coming with some degree of regularity to your parish. The survey results will tell you what about the parish is keeping them engaged, as well as things that might be prompting them to start falling away. Both elements will help inform how we can reach out to those completely detached from the parish. Additionally, it is our belief that more deeply engaging and equipping those who are present in our pews is a major step toward bringing others into the Church. How can we equip those in our pews to be disciple makers? These results will help us find those answers.

Summarized parish and diocese results will be shared later in the year and will be incorporated into our on-going parish and diocesan strategic planning.