The Diocesan pastoral letter and plan were promulgated on February 6, 2021, at St. Thomas More Newman Center in Columbia, Missouri.

Using the teachings of the Church, especially from the Second Vatican Council and Pope Francis, our diocese is embarking on a pastoral plan to help our communities deepen their ability to engage in charity and mercy, embrace a stewardship spirituality, and empower an understanding of the co-responsibility of laity and clergy in this effort. As Pope Francis wrote in Evangelii Gaudium, "The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community. While certainly not the only institution which evangelizes, if the parish proves capable of self-renewal and constant adaptivity, it continues to be ‘the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters.’”