By: Kaitlin Larson
While the Parish Transformation committee only has a few remaining meetings left, committee members are hard at work bringing all of our building blocks and ideas together in order to create an action plan moving forward. Committee members are busy looking at meeting notes, survey results, and collaborating with one another to decide what will be best for our parish community.
The committee has identified three mission building blocks in which our mission narrative will be rooted. Those elements are Prayer & Worship, Missionary Spirit, and Stewardship. The building blocks highlight what we feel are pearls of success of our parish and also what we want to focus on as we move forward.
A first draft of the Mission Narrative was read and committee members gave feedback. The Mission Narrative will continue to evolve over our remaining weeks together in order to truly capture what our parish has to offer and who our parishioners are. The Mission Narrative touched on points of community, had a sense of unity and dedication, a specific distinction of one unit, not two separate parishes, importance of family, and our dedication to serving and helping others. The final draft of the Mission Narrative will be share with all parishioners.
The committee members broke into three small groups in order to better focus our efforts in our remaining meetings and to successfully develop and carry out our action plan. The three subcommittees are Finance, Mission, and School & Education.
- The Finance team focuses on the financial state of our parish and related issues such as collection, electronic giving, opportunities for fundraising, and looking at what will be best for our parish community in tackling our debt.
- The Mission team assists the construction of the Mission Narrative and figures how our building blocks are present and carried out within our parish community.
- The School & Education team looks at both, the school community of ICSJ and their involvement as well as education for our parishioners and families, such as sacraments and resources or prayer and worship.
- For majority of the time, members worked in their designated small groups. Each group shared our highlights of the conversations that were heard during group time. Below are highlights from each subcommittee.
Finance
- Most time was spent talking about revenue, attendance, and giving
- Highlighted the idea of getting school families who are not parishioners involved
- Consideration if there is money to be saved by combining parishes. This may be so subtle that it would not appear different in our day-to-day interactions and celebrations during the masses, etc.
Mission
- Developed goals for the three building blocks (prayer and worship, missionary spirit, stewardship).
- Gave further input for mission narrative such as scripture suggestions and ideas to add and build upon
Education/School
- Split group members into small groups based around attendance, involvement and communication
- Looked at what the school has to offer the parish and vice versa
- Will also be focusing on how can we target younger age groups of our parish (newlyweds, teen population, young families, youth programs)
- Looking into social opportunities for families