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Parish mission to combat bad influences
By Andrew Junker, ajunker@catholicsun.org
September 4, 2008
Families are often under assault from negative cultural influences, said Pat Impiccini, but there are ways to combat that influence and grow in grace and fidelity to the Lord.
He’s an event coordinator for Sound Mission Ministries, a Tempe-based organization that hosts parish missions. On the weekend of Sept. 14-16, they will present a Faithful Families Parish Mission at St. Helen Parish in Glendale.
“Families are challenged these days by everything our culture has to throw at them,” Impiccini said. “You have to take time to get out of the general routine that you’re in and just focus on Christ.”
To help participants gain that focus, the mission will alternate between music and talks, small group discussions and silent time before the Blessed Sacrament.
“It calls people to focus and worship,” said Chris Muglia, a local musician who founded Sound Mission Ministries about five years ago.
He had been working mainly in music and teen ministry, but saw a need for parish missions offered to regular families. Muglia connected with Bob Perron, a nationally based speaker, and began presenting these missions across the country.
“We’ve gotten wonderful feedback,” Perron said. A recent mission in Santa Barbara, Calif., drew more than 700 people.
Attracting a broad spectrum of families is one of Sound Mission Ministries’ goals.
“We had been doing what we call parish missions for years and years and basically — when you looked at who was coming to the parish mission — it was the most committed and active families, the ones who were on every committee at church,” Perron said.
“There wasn’t a broad appeal at many missions. Now, that’s a generalization, but I think it’s accurate,” he said.
So, Sound Mission Ministries invites attendees to bring their neighboring families, aunts, uncles and friends who have maybe drifted away from regular practice of the faith.
In addition to music, adoration and presentations by Muglia, Perron, singer-songwriter Simona Olson as well as Mary Moore, who writes a regular column for The Catholic Sun, the mission will also feature group discussions for the men, women and teens in attendance.
“I had some concern with how open the men would be” in the breakout groups, Impiccini said. “But they really opened up and shared and talked about the things that challenge men today.”
Those challenges — be they pornography, consumerism or just spiritual malaise — have helped foster a vocations crisis that not many people talk about.
“We hear about a vocations crisis in the Church, and I believe that crisis is real, but I think a larger vocations crisis in our Church is that 50 percent of our marriages are ending in divorce,” Perron said.
“If tomorrow 50 percent of the priesthood packed it up and quit doing what they were doing, it would be the biggest headline in this country,” he said. “Faith is central to our home and not just what we do on Sunday.”
Muglia wants families to focus more on God.
“Regardless of where you are in your relationship with Christ or the Church, Christ is calling us, welcoming us and He wants to offer the fullness of life in all its forms,” Muglia said.
“Come and see what may be there for you,” he said. “I know that when people open themselves up, the Holy Spirit can move them.”
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