Mission Update • April 2022

The Parish Council met on April 21 to get updates on the progress we've made toward the 2022 goals for our 4 main strategic focus areas.

As we keep ramping up our parish offerings and initiatives - including both new offerings and pre COVID experiences that we consider bringing back, we have developed a set of key questions to ask before beginning to help us make sure that everything we are doing in our parish continues to stay focused on our mission roadmap plan:

• What are the concrete goals for this program/event?
• How will we evaluate whether or not it was fruitful?
• Who needs to be involved in this initiative (staff, clergy, volunteers)?

Evangelization & Discipleship

The candidate we initally had who was interested in our open Director position ended up taking a different position closer to his family.  We are asking all parishioners to please add  to your daily prayers that the right candidate would come forward to assist our parish in staying on mission and maintaining the momentum we have gained over the past 2 years. 

Liturgy

Goal #1:  Focus on helping people encounter Jesus in the Eucharist through Eucharistic events like holy hours, processions, etc. 

We have had 4 or our monthly Encounter holy hour events. The first three had approximately 25 attendees and the 4th (in March) had 60.  This was likely due to the Bible Study participants attending & because it fell during Lent.

We are working on a city-wide Eucharistic Procession for the Feast of Corpus Christ (our parish feast day) on Sunday, June 19.  We will leaving the parish at 2:30 and process with the Eucharist to Lourdes where the other parishes will meet us for prayer together. Working on some kind of parish celebration after the procession.

Goal #2:  Re-launch full liturgical ministries

Maria will be workign with our Relationship Coordinator to provide usher and greeter training.  We need to work on some consistency - especially now that the constant shifting of these roles due to the pandemic has settled.

Pastoral Outreach

Some of the areas that previously fell under pastoral outreach have moved to fall under Hospitality now.  This includes the work we're doing with Ministry Blueprints on creating a plan for radical hospitality, and our outreach to new members and those who come for weddings, baptisms, and funerals.

See the full Pastoral Outreach Goal Update here.  

Parish Operations

The long term goals for parish operations for 2022:
Goal #1:  Develop robust and complete Human Resource policies and procedures including:

• the new employee onboarding process which has been developed and implemented within the past few months
• continuing work on aligning staff job descriptions to mission (in progress), 
• filling our open positions, and 
• developing an annual review process for staff.

Goal #2:  Developing building safety  plans and procedures including:

• working with the facilities staff to create a mechanical manual for each building that includes key safety information, utility shut off locations, etc,
• doing a room usage assessment to make sure we know what meeting spaces are available, how many each space can hold, and the A/V equipment in each space
• numbering and labeling all exterior doors on our properties, and
• installing security cameras and lighting on all properties.

Goal #3:  Working with Buildlings & Grounds Committee from Finance Council to create a 10 year Captial Improvement priortization list. 

Other Mission Updates

The new Relationship Coordinator (Deb Lawent) has been working on a series of Hospitality Goals for our parish for the coming year.  See the Hospitality Goals here.  

You see the full Parish Council Meeting Minutes here.