Pastor’s Corner — September 19th, 2021
RRM Recommendations and Our Parish Grouping
A few weeks ago, the Realign Resources for Mission Committee unveiled its eighth draft of the parish groupings we are going to recommend to the bishop. In this latest version, our parish is slated to be “grouped” with Holy Spirit Parish in Hamburg. I know for many people this RRM process just got real. For those who haven’t been paying too close attention to this process, and want to be caught up, the diocese put together a website that has most of the communication the diocese has directly communicated to the diocese. The latest video presentation is a necessary context to understand the groupings. And the Bishop’s Vision for a Healthy Parish for a Healthy Parish is necessary context to the latest video presentation.
For those who have been following our process, here are a few things to keep in mind.
1) Just because the latest draft has our parish paired with Holy Spirit Parish, that doesn’t mean this grouping is in stone. In fact, nothing is in stone until the Bishop promulgates his decisions after our recommendations are submitted. Moreover, the whole point of us presenting to the lay faithful of the diocese was to garner helpful feedback so that the best groupings might be recommended. (Trust me, we’ve been receiving a lot of feedback)
2) As we announced in the presentation, the bishop is providing for a stable, reliable and agile implementation process that will use a phased approach to making the parish groupings a reality over the next few years. Not everything is going to happen at once.
3) There will be a lot more communication and explanation on the entire process before anything happens. While we have put a lot of information out there in terms of vision and why we’re doing all of this, the Bishop and his team will ensure that clear communication remains throughout the implementation process. No one is going to be surprised about anything.
4) Please continue to pray for the RRM committee as we are going to be submitting our final proposals to the bishop likely within the next month.
Alpha Starts in October
This weekend we heard more about Alpha. Who are you going to invite? To sign up a guest you invite or to volunteer in this beautiful way of introducing Jesus to the world, please go here.
Business Manager Needed for St. Mary Magdalen
The new pastor at St. Mary Magdalen is a friend of mine and he asked me to let people know that they are looking for a new Business Manager for their parish. If you know someone who might interested, please send them this link.
Your servant in the Lord,
Fr. Mathias