The church was the most important building in the parish. People would come there at least once a week, to meet and to hear the latest news. On the Stranda coast, one could afford to build churches of stone. There were stone churches in the parishes of Ålem, Mönsterås and Döderhult. In the in-lands, churches were mostly built of wood.
Chapels were built at every thorough-fare. On this account, there was a chapel, Pata Chapel, at the market-place in Pata.
The peasants of Stranda would no doubt have met black-friars from the monastery in Kalmar. The friars came in pairs to preach in the country-side. They were called black-friars because they wore black habits. They would preach inside the church or out of doors, but they also brought news from Kalmar and from the rest of the world. The friars would tell about new kinds of food, new spices and new ways to farm the land. They also helped the peasants to write important documents, such as deeds or wills. When the peasants came to Kalmar, they could stay at the monastery. The black-friars had lodgings where travellers could spend the night.
The monastery at Kronobäck and, earlier on, the hospice at Öknabäck were important to the people in Stranda, because the friars cared for the people who were ill. The monastery at Kronobäck owned around 20 farms in the parish of Mönsterås.