All the chatter about church growth & discipleship is great, but we shouldn't overlook how much unhealthily managed conflict has led to decline in parishes and dioceses.

Only speaking from my own context, but that conflict isn't even necessarily about sexuality!

At least for my parish, the parochial report metrics have a visible drop-off the year after the conflict happened. And we're still not back to baseline.

We should absolutely be reaching out to our communities, evangelizing, and growing disciples. But bare minimum, we might also want to try to keep the people we do have.

(YMMV, it can certainly sometimes be helpful to shed some particularly toxic people!)

Just mentally listing off all the churches I can think of who are shadows of their former selves due to (primarily male) clergy behaving badly.