Only 9 parishes instead of 70, aligned with the deanery boundaries. That is the plan of the Diocese of Speyer.

At the local level in communities, church life should remain something people can experience, while the parishes, as a structure, take on a coordinating role.

With this, the diocesan leadership is responding—much like most other dioceses—to the long-foreseeable shortage of personnel and funds, as well as to the decline in church attendance and religious practice.

The surge of secularization in our society, as the most recent study on church membership has made plain, calls for a response.

Only 13 percent now describe themselves as religious in the churchly sense. The communities’ shrinking into a single social milieu does the rest.

Beyond the merger

For this reason, the merging of parishes—driven primarily by the staffing ratio of full-time church employees—cannot and must not be the only solution.

We need church pioneers who make a genuine, concrete effort to move the table around which we gather as Christians into the center of society.

People who, together with others, stay alert and creative about how and where community can take shape.

Real freedom needed

The forces of inertia around the territorial structure make it hard to create real freedom—not just “playgrounds”—for new forms of community, and to equip church pioneers to practice them alongside others.

Just how varied this can be is shown by initiatives such as Gründergeist (“Founders’ Spirit”), which the Diocese of Speyer helps support.

Whether communities become more inviting again depends not primarily on optimized care (which the new structures are often geared toward), but on whether people feel at home, whether they experience a sense of being held and carried.

Mixed forest, not monoculture

This requires diversity, which the church leadership must recognize and nurture for the long term.

In the future, we need more mixed forest than monoculture. Tradition and innovation must stand together in a wise both-and.

Preserving what has proven itself means security and stability. Letting go of the old creates flexibility.

A readiness for innovation trusts in the stirring of the divine Spirit: “Go ahead and try! It could turn out well!”

That would be an important encouragement to everyone committed at a decisive milestone for the future of the Church.

• Claudia Pfrang is a pastoral theologian and director of the Domberg Academy of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.