Key Takeaways
- The Bishop’s Bulletin of the Diocese of Sioux Falls published a first-person account by Julie Wieseman, director of evangelization and discipleship for the Good Shepherd Pastorate, detailing three years of partnership between Holy Spirit Catholic Parish in Sioux Falls and Communio.
- Holy Spirit set a three-year attendance target of 2,399 average weekly Mass attendees. By May 2026, actual attendance reached 2,422, exceeding the goal. Since 2024, approximately 56 new parishioners have been welcomed each week.
- Baptisms grew from 45 in 2023 to 110 in 2025. Families registered grew from 1,800 in 2021 to nearly 2,300 today. Ninety-two individuals joined the faith in 2026 alone.
- Over three years, the parish executed 49 relationship ministry activities, drawing over 8,500 estimated attendees to outreach events alone, with nearly 40% coming from outside the parish membership.
- Nearly 900 individuals completed skills and spiritually based relationship education, arming couples and individuals with the tools to transform their relationships.
The Story: A Vision, a Partnership, and Three Years of Measurable Fruit
The Bishop’s Bulletin of the Diocese of Sioux Falls published its September 2026 edition with a guest column that every pastor and diocesan leader in the country should read.
Written by Julie Wieseman, the director of evangelization and discipleship for the Good Shepherd Pastorate in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the article tells the story of what happened when Father James Mason, pastor of the parishes of the Good Shepherd Pastorate, including Holy Spirit and St. Dominic Canton, decided in summer 2023 to partner with Communio. His vision was straightforward and pastoral: to bring souls to Jesus Christ through strong marriages, relationships, and families.
Three years later, the numbers tell a story that is both measurable and moving.
The Core Finding: Specific Targets, Specific Results
What makes the Holy Spirit story so instructive for other parish leaders is not just the outcomes. It is the process that produced them.
Communio brought a four-step framework to the partnership: analyze, plan, implement, and review. The first step was data. Holy Spirit surveyed its own parishioners on relational health, gathered publicly available data on the surrounding community, and used the results to identify where to focus its ministry first. Married individuals and singles rose to the top of the priority list.
From that foundation, the parish set two concrete three-year targets. The growth goal: increase average weekly Mass attendance from 2,033 to 2,399 by June 2026. The relationship goal: move from zero to 990 individual completions of spiritual and skills-based relationship ministry content.
By May 2026, average weekly Mass attendance had reached 2,422, surpassing the target. Since 2024, approximately 56 new parishioners have joined each week. The parish’s registered family count grew from 1,800 in 2021 to nearly 2,300 today.
The sacramental data is equally striking. Baptisms grew from 45 in 2023 to 110 in 2025, more than doubling in two years. The parish averaged 25 marriages per year from 2023 to 2025. Ninety-two individuals entered the faith in 2026. And nearly 900 individuals completed the relationship education content that Communio provided, equipping them with skills to build healthier marriages and relationships.
The Counterintuitive Angle: The Fall Festival Is Evangelism
Here is the detail in Wieseman’s account that most parishes would not immediately associate with growth, conversion, and baptisms.
The Fall Festival.
Not a mission trip. Not an alpha program. Not a series of homilies on evangelization. The Fall Festival at Holy Spirit began in September 2023 with a pumpkin craft project for kids and a welcoming atmosphere for the surrounding community. By 2025, it was drawing an estimated 2,300 attendees. One participant described it this way: “I felt like it helped bring my family closer together and bring us closer to the church.”
This is the Communio model working exactly as designed. The outreach phase is not a faith pitch. It is a low-stakes, genuinely welcoming community experience that draws people who would never walk into a Sunday Mass on their own. From there, the parish moves them into smaller ongoing engagement events, date nights, dinner and panel discussions with couples at various stages of marriage, young adult gatherings. And from there, into the growth journey: marriage retreats, skills-based relationship education, and the formation that produces lasting change.
One attendee of the EverMore in Love marriage retreat described it as “Life changing! It was a literal blessing from God for our marriage.” Another said the retreat “showed me real hope for our marriage.”
A pumpkin craft project and a marriage retreat are not separate ministries. They are the front door and the living room of the same house. And the house is the parish.
What This Means for Your Parish
At Communio, the Bishop’s Bulletin account of Holy Spirit’s journey captures what we see consistently in parish partnerships across the country: the parishes that commit to the process, that set measurable targets, that invest in the full arc from outreach to formation, are the ones that produce results that exceed their own expectations.
Wieseman’s testimony at Palm Sunday 2026 is the image that stays with you from the article. Standing at the entrance as the procession began, she was overwhelmed by the beautiful young families, several mothers carrying newborns, expectant mothers, young adults, and empty nesters who had joined Holy Spirit to help care for grandchildren. These were the witnesses of what a relationship ministry culture produces over time.
Not a single dramatic program. Not a viral moment. Three years of consistent, data-informed, community-centered work, guided by a clear vision and supported by a framework that made the right next step always visible.
Your parish does not need to be in South Dakota for this to work. You do not need to be a diocese with burgeoning population growth. You need a pastor with a vision, a staff member or volunteer with capacity, and a willingness to let the data guide the strategy. The framework exists. The tools are built. The results at Holy Spirit are documented.
Communio is ready to bring the same process to your parish.
Take the Next Step
Communio partners with Catholic parishes across the country to build data-informed marriage and family ministry that sets measurable targets and produces documented results.
► Read the full Bishop’s Bulletin article by Julie Wieseman → sfcatholic.org
► Explore Communio’s resources for Catholic parishes → communio.org
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Good Shepherd Pastorate and how did its partnership with Communio begin? The Good Shepherd Pastorate in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, includes Holy Spirit Catholic Parish and St. Dominic Canton. In summer 2023, Father James Mason, the pastor, began a collaboration with Communio, a nonprofit ministry that trains and equips parishes to share the Gospel through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriages, and families. Julie Wieseman was hired as director of evangelization and discipleship specifically to lead the partnership and bring its relationship ministry vision to life.
What targets did Holy Spirit set and did they achieve them? Holy Spirit set two three-year targets in partnership with Communio. The growth goal was to increase average weekly Mass attendance from 2,033 to 2,399 by June 2026. The relationship goal was to grow from zero to 990 individual completions of spiritual and skills-based relationship ministry content. By May 2026, attendance had reached 2,422, surpassing the target. Nearly 900 individuals completed relationship education content, close to the original goal.
What were the sacramental outcomes of the partnership? Baptisms grew from 45 in 2023 to 110 in 2025. The parish averaged 25 marriages per year from 2023 to 2025. Ninety-two individuals joined the faith in 2026. Registered families grew from 1,800 in 2021 to nearly 2,300 today. Since 2024, approximately 56 new parishioners have been welcomed each week.
How does the Communio framework work in practice? Communio uses a four-step process: analyze, plan, implement, and review. The analyze phase gathers data on the relational health of the parish and surrounding community. The plan phase designs a ministry strategy built around measurable outcomes. The implementation phase moves through three tiers: broad outreach events that welcome the surrounding community, ongoing engagement gatherings that build community, and growth journey activities that deliver relationship skills and spiritual formation content. The review phase uses data to assess and improve the strategy over time.
What made the outreach events so effective at Holy Spirit? The outreach events, including the Fall Festival and a Family-Friendly New Year’s Eve, were designed as non-threatening, welcoming community experiences that drew people who would not otherwise attend a parish event. Over the three-year partnership, six outreach activities attracted over 8,500 estimated attendees, with nearly 40% coming from outside the parish. The Fall Festival alone grew to attract an estimated 2,300 attendees in 2025, creating a natural on-ramp into deeper community and eventually into the faith itself.
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