Maintain Parish Life With Your Parish App

In the midst of daily uncertainty and increasingly significant changes to our way of life, it is vital to maintain good communication with parishioners for immediate needs and the long-term faith life of the parish community. Where other forms of contact may be restricted at this time because of health concerns, myParish can offer support and serve as a strong resource for parish life.

Knowing that your parish is balancing many concerns and challenges related to the current crisis, we have composed the following list of strategies to help you mitigate issues while continuing to support the faith life of your parishioners.

myParish App Features & Strategies

Send Messages More Frequently

Messages will most likely show itself to be the most important feature at this time. Without good parish communication, you may discover a more severe impact in other areas. Parishioners want to stay updated with sacramental/devotional availability. If Mass is cancelled, they may assume everything else is. You will need to make clear what is and isn’t still scheduled at the church. Whenever there any change, send a message.

Remind Parishioners about the Bulletin

As a time-tested form of communication, many people rely on the bulletin for their weekly communication. Through app messages, email, and social media, remind people that the bulletin is still easily accessible through the Bulletin button on the app. For more strategies involving your bulletin click here.

Rely More on Online Giving

In the case that the church or parish activities are cancelled or postponed, weekly Mass-goers in the habit of giving at Mass, may not think of the impact of their missing donations. It will be important for you to spread the word about your online giving. Having this in your app makes it more convenient for those accessing the app for other reasons, to easily maintain their support as well.

Access to Helpful Prayers

When unable to attend the church for Mass, the faithful may watch Mass in TV or streamed through myParish. For such occasions, we have made the Order of Mass prayers available in the Prayers feature, so parishioners can still follow along. In addition to the Mass prayers, you may want to encourage your parishioners to join in praying a Novena to St. Rocco or the Coronavirus Novena Prayer (both available in the app) for an end to this pandemic.

Continued Participation in the Mass

As previously mentioned, while church attendance may be restricted, Mass can still be streamed through myParish App. If your app does not currently have this feature, we can add streamed Mass from any source, your parish, your diocese, or CatholicTV. Contact us and we will be happy to assist you in adding this feature.

Nourishment of the Word of God

As Lent progresses and restrictions persist, it may be easy for people to lose touch with the liturgical life of the Church. Encourage people to continue to feed their souls daily with Scripture available in the Readings feature in preparation for the Easter liturgy.

Pastoral Homilies

The parish flock still needs the guidance, instruction, and encouragement of their spiritual father. If you have homilies available as video, audio, or PDF documents, continue to add them to your app weekly and notify all your users when they are accessible in the Homilies feature.

Continue to keep in mind all the ways parishioners connect with your parish and are fed spiritually and sacramentally. myParish app can help in many ways to maintain and grow your parish life in the midst of our changing circumstances.