Below is the transcript of the vision as proposed by the ParishVision team. Steve Brady lays out how we arrived at our decision and why. Elliott Krejci takes a deeper dive into how this vision will be accomplished within the proposed framework.
Part I: The How and Why by Steve Brady
I joined the Vision Team to help shape the future of St. Dominic and St. George. I knew there would be discussions about finance, and buildings and mass schedules and the like. However, the team started their discussions with what has become our central theme. Specifically, A Christ-Centered, community of believers focused on God and how can we best show our devotion and commitment to serve him.
The Vision team’s priorities included issues such as how can we create a model that will increase not just the number of worshippers at the Sunday masses, but increase the opportunities for faith formation and growth of our members, and answer the call to serve others.
The Vision Team set upon the task of finding out what has worked in other parishes and in fact other religions. In order to create not just a surviving parish but a thriving one, our research revealed that any decision had to be governed by what would indeed give greater Glory to God. We could not just focus on numbers. We could not focus on how much was in the collection. We could not just focus on our favorite program or even our favorite place to sit in church. What our model had to do was to allow our parishioners to experience a deeper relationship with God and increase our spirituality. If we try, as some parishes do, and just do a few things to get by those things may work for a while, but as we’ve seen from the numbers we would just be postponing the inevitable.
Trying to cling to the way that things have always been done does not serve the higher purpose that the Vision Team and we feel the parishioners at St. George and St. Dominic both deserve and desire. How can we create a dynamic parish that encompasses a community of believers who want to increase their spirituality, serve others and grow in their love of God?
One of my favorite quotes is from Albert Einstein…hardly a Theologian, but he said, In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity. You have seen the data. You know these are difficult times. You know that changes must be made. You have heard that in order for changes to be successful, we must be “all-in” for God. We have a wonderful opportunity. We can create that parish. We can stand on the shoulders of the people who founded our parishes and feel what they must have felt as they planned what parish life would entail, some parishioners from St. Dominic’s may even be able to remember those days.
So the vision team has looked at the data and came up with the starting point for the God-centered future that we believe is possible. We believe that the Spirit is calling us to a model that would have one parish working together for the greater glory of God. The data shows that we cannot support two parallel parishes. When the Vision Team was put together that’s what many of us had hoped for. Beyond the financial data, in the very near future, we will have fewer people to make up our separate parishes, we will have fewer people attending the masses at our individual parishes, we won’t have enough volunteers to implement and support the dynamic parish life at both locations. And Everyone should be painfully aware by now that at some point in the very near future, we will only have one priest.
Our model then is to have one parish with two campuses. By capitalizing on the strengths of each location, the Vision Team is putting forth the model where The St. Dominic campus would be the center for Elementary Education and lifelong faith formation. The St. George campus would be the center of worship and community outreach and service.
When that idea first came to light in our meetings, it was as if a great weight had been lifted off our shoulders. It met our criteria of the building block for the dynamic, active parish life we said was our primary focus. It would provide us with the number of people necessary to be viable, shoring up our existing programs and even being able to look at other possibilities that would add to our spiritual growth. We would be good stewards having a sound financial base that would support our physical plant and faith-filled programs. We feel that just like the collaboration that led to Holy Cross Academy, this move with strengthen our parish and help to make us better. The Vision Team feels very strongly that we are Better Together.
Part II: Vision Implementation by Elliott Krejci
Basically, we are giving you a framework. Worship and outreach at St. George, education and faith formation at St. Dominics. As Steve had mentioned before we all came together to talk about the parishes but what we found was that past all the logistics we were really just yearning for deeper faith and spirituality from our parish. A recent survey from the Dioceses of Springfield asked several hundred former Catholics, “What were the main reasons why you left the church?” About seven of ten said that their spiritual needs were not being met. 70%, wow. You are most likely not part of the 70% but we can probably empathize, maybe we think our Sunday could be a little more vibrant, a little more welcoming, a little more meaningful. I have heard we have the diamond of all religions, but no one seems to want to show it off. Mystically the bread and wine become blood and flesh, yet we leave mass unmystified. We privately sit in our pews holding on to this mystical gem of a Faith as our brothers and sister disappear from around us. We can change this with God’s help and our work. Our plan at its core is put God first before all by focusing on 6 areas that we believe will help grow our Church spiritually and foster the vibrant Catholic community we crave. They are:
- Pervading Hospitality
- Authentic Meaningful Worship
- Intentional Discipleship
- Volunteer Empowerment
- Relevant Outreach
- Purposeful Stewardship
Among the many activities of a parish, “none is as vital or as community-forming as the Sunday celebration of the Lord’s Day.”
—Pope Saint John Paul II
Let’s start with the Sunday celebration. This is where we work on Pervading hospitality and Authentic Meaningful Worship. Hospitality is huge and we envision it as a job everyone does and not just the people with name tags. Pervading means to spread throughout and be perceived in every part of. Like a smell. Right now the people with name tags are the only ones that “smell”. We need everyone to smell.
Authentic Meaningful Worship. Here we envision working with the pastors, priests, and deacons on how to make homilies more meaningful and more applicable to our lives. We envision more opportunities for different worship like adoration and devotions to Mary, maybe praise and worship sessions. Basically authentic to us is real, significant, and maybe even something that can transform our lives.
Okay so we got this hospitality going, everyone is smelling to the high heavens, the homily is hitting home, the music is stirring our souls and we are experiencing Christ in new ways and on new levels. That’s great, but we want others to share in this. We want all of SDS and St. G to experience this and that is why we chose to move all worship to St. George. Of the two buildings, it’s the place where the most people can experience Christ with having one priest.
The sermon on the mount was one of Jesus’ longest recorded sermons and according to scripture had large and diverse crowds from all over. Because of St. George’s size, it seems to be the appropriate place to centralize our worship, it’s our mount if you will. Emphasis on “OURS”. Not exclusively St. George’s or St. Dominic’s, but OURS.
Moving on from there to faith formation and outreach. Here we work on our Intentional Discipleship, Relevant Outreach, and Volunteer Empowerment. We can’t sit on the sidelines anymore. We need to be more intentional about our Catholic faith. We need to make the faith ours, take ownership of it. We envision faith formation that will take us on deeper dives on things like Mass and other “gems” we Catholics never knew or should know. Our hope is that through our pervading hospitality and authentic meaningful worship you will want to tell people about your faith, you will want to show off that diamond.
Relevant Outreach and Volunteer Empowerment. Maybe you have an idea for a mission and you need help. For example, there is a group of people, at another church, that seeks donations of old jewelry. They then take that jewelry sell it and the cash goes to stop human trafficking. This year that group raised $250,000! We envision a place where people can form missions (relevant outreach) and be able to get resources (Volunteer Empowerment) needed to make that mission possible. Or maybe you’re a volunteer in need of a mission, we will hopefully have built up many relevant outreach programs for you to choose.
Purposeful Stewardship. This is not about money, it is a small part, but it is mostly about rethinking the definition of stewardship. I like what Chris Goulard, pastor of Stewardship at Saddleback Church, says: “Stewardship is foundationally understanding that we are not owners of things, but managers,” He believes that at its core, stewardship is actually very simple. It basically boils down to three major points:
- God owns it all.
- We are all stewards.
- We have a responsibility to manage it for His glory
I also interpret this as applicable for time and talents. God is the giver of time and talents and he is calling all of us to use/manage those talents and that time for His Glory. Chris goes on to say, “If we understood these pieces, we would do things differently and everything would fall into place,” Chris said.
And that brings me back full circle, the Vision team came to an understanding and we want to do things differently because we are all managers of these parishes and we have a responsibility to manage it for His Glory. We obviously can’t continue the way we have been. We are stepping up to put God first as a community and as an individual through these six areas. It’s a lot and definitely won’t happen overnight. It will take God and us, His managers. Will you join us?
Thank you.