In last week’s column, I talked about our St. Vincent de Paul conference, which helped us make progress on one of the biggest goals of our 2018 Strategic Plan. I thought I’d use today’s column to update you on some other items we’ve been working on. After all, our strategic plans in 2018 and 2023 were designed to help us work on many of the goals that you articulated when you filled out your parish surveys, so I want to make sure you know that your feedback is taken seriously and has benefited the parish greatly over the past several years.
· We’ve added additional weekly opportunities for Eucharistic Adoration and Confession.
· You let us know that one of the biggest obstacles to participating in faith formation activities was busy-ness and scheduling, so Rianna began our parish podcast, which many of you are taking advantage of. We’re also investigating whether a parish partnership with the Hallow app might aid in this goal, as well.
· Thanks to the diligent efforts of Lindsey and her volunteers, we’ve been able to grow our 8:45am choir to the largest membership in recent memory, while recruiting a lot of extra cantors and restarting the Handbell Choir. We’ve also been able to utilize the student choir at more of our parish liturgies.
· Many of you pointed out the lack of a parish-wide retreat program, so we’ve implemented the Light of the World retreat, which has been very well-received by parishioners who’ve attended. We’ll continue offering this retreat twice a year.
· We’ve expanded our use of high school students in weekend liturgical ministries and now have a great number of our youth serving as MC’s, EMHC’s and lectors.
· We’ve instituted a Welcome Desk and hospitality ministry to help strengthen how we welcome parishioners and guests to Sunday Mass.
· We’ve balanced the parish budget, which has enabled us to make great headway in tackling a lot of deferred maintenance throughout the campus. This has also made it possible for us to hire security for Sunday Masses.
We always have room to improve and grow, so I’m grateful to all of our parishioners (especially in our parish leadership groups) who have helped us identify growth areas in our parish and work to meet them. After all, our work is all about building this little corner of the Kingdom entrusted to us so that we might lead our world closer to Christ, starting with our local community.
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