Visiblilty should not just be internet visibility but also community visibility.
My own (BCC) parish seems to do virtually nothing in terms of community visibility, yet a much smaller Russian Catholic parish, (El Segundo, CA), regularly holds fund raising dinners, each month, for various charities.
I write this is the general sense, not as any criticism regarding what a parish mission is.
Steve, my friend,
Your comments are very valid and the ongoing thread that I initiated of parish websites worth seeing was never intended to suggest that a website replace the day-to-day activity, spiritual and communal, that should mark a parish.
There are, without question, intensely viable and thriving parishes that have no internet presence. Likewise, there are parishes that are prominently displayed on the web but are lacking in anything which suggests a vibrant parish life.
The whole thrust of that thread, however, was and remains to be an effort to encourage our parishes to take advantage of what has, as we all know, become a major communication tool - not just to those faithful already enrolled and (hopefully) active in a parish.
In your years here, you've undoubtedly seen the hundreds of inquiries posted by persons looking to find a parish. There are many reasons behind these: people are relocating due to jobs, a child is headed off to school in a distant city, people are seeking to return to a faith with which they've lost touch, others are unchurched but now seek to find God, and, for some it's as simple as a planned vacation and the desire to worship while away from home.
I think that, overall, our members do an admirable job in answering those requests - talking up parishes that they know, praising the spirituality of a given parish, extolling the beauty of this or that temple, remarking on the welcoming nature of its parishioners, and highlighting the qualities of the priests. And, the positive feedback that often follows shows that inquirers generally take them at their word.
But, we live in an age when people are attuned to seeking out audio and visual sensations to satisfy their curiousity. Thus, the ability to point to a website the content of which supports all that has been said and displays a parish community which is spiritually and communally vibrant can be a major deciding factor between just stopping at the first Catholic or Orthodox church one passes and seeking out a specific one. And, we are kidding ourselves if we don't take advantage of this medium, because we need it to evangelize and we need to evangelize.
So, we need both - the day-to-day vibrancy and to make it known. St Andrew's in El Segundo is, as you describe it, and has fulfilled it's mission without much of an internet presence until relatively recently. Could it do more with greater visibility? I don't know, but it would be worth a try.
Does St Mary's need both - more day-to-day vibrancy and a more visible presence? Sounds like it, from what you say. Could having the latter help to bring about the former? Perhaps - maybe if there was a greater awareness of it, with a resulting influx of new blood, there would be demand for, and interest in, more activity. I'm not intending to be critical; I know that you've created an unofficial site and a facebook page - significantly more internet presence than it ever had. Hopefully, those will help to drive things in a positive direction.
Many years,
Neil
