- Review of Proposed Meeting dates (6:00-6:12pm)
- All meetings begin at 6:00pm, the following meeting dates are:
- September 19, 2024; October 24, 2024 with Finance Council; November 21, 2024; December 19, 2024; January 30, 2025; February 20, 2025; March 13, 2025; April 3, 2025; May 1, 2025; June 19, 2025 with Finance Council
- Establishing pastoral priorities for the next 2-3 years (6:12-7:50pm)
- Group Discussion (each bullet point represents the input of a different member):
- Creating a community where people feel welcome, having a goal of welcoming others further brings people to an encounter with Christ
- Welcoming environment, hospitality, both should be hand in hand, we need people to create this welcoming environment, faith formation for families, focus on youth formation, provide formation for our future generations
- Creating a welcoming environment, liturgy should be a focus, training people on what it means to be a leader in that ministry, when we do it well, people can feel it
- Youth formation and events, prioritizing based on our meeting minutes, review of matrix
- Creating a sense of community, using the talents from our community to bring us together and create fun activities for both the church and the school, faith formation for families, and having more youth related events and organizations
- Liturgy should be our priority, welcoming community as a second priority, faith formation as a third priority, stewardship
- Creating a welcoming community, and focusing on liturgy, caring for those around us, faith needs to be grounded in the eucharist, whatever we do, we need to be a welcoming people, domestic church – using Formed resource to help educate us, we need to have our youth go through sacraments because they genuinely want to grow in their faith
- Group Discussion (each bullet point represents the input of a different member):
- Father Capone’s Feedback:
- Community, welcome, faith formation, youth, hospitality, use of talents, liturgy, formation of ministers – all key words that have been brought up among the council
- No matter what we do, we should always be welcoming
- Two buckets for all the things we have discussed, and what should be our priorities:
- Evangelization
- Stewardship
- Handouts on Evangelization and Stewardship provided by Father Robert who advocated for making these two our pastoral priorities for the next 2 – 3 years as they are buckets that contain the themes we have surfaced.
- Evangelization contains welcome, family faith formation, youth, discipleship, liturgy, retreats, worship space. Evangelization is not just the proclamation of the Kerygma to those who do not know Christ, but also formation of those that do, the making of disciples who know and love him more and more.
- If we are to live as missionary disciples within an evangelizing community, we need the engagement of the entire community. We surfaced themes such as belonging and engagement, bringing forth spiritual gifts or charisms of all the baptized, and the need for human and financial resources, ministers and money, to further realize our Mission of being a Church where people encounter Jesus Christ and grow as Missionary Disciples.
- Over Summer, Council members are to discern what themes we’ve surfaced within the buckets of evangelization and stewardship to focus on. The September meeting will be devoted to what themes we will focus on.
- The choices from the Evangelization “bucket” are Welcome and Hospitality / Family Faith Formation / Youth / Missionary Discipleship / School Access and Affordability / Retreats / Minister Formation.
- The choices from the Stewardship “bucket” are Sunday Offertory / Called and Gifted / Minister recruitment, appreciation and retention / Belonging and Engagement / Ownership and Co-responsibility
- Liturgy is the spirit that will sustain us in all that we do – out of liturgy both evangelization stewardship flow naturally
- Liturgy involves focusing on our ministry and coming to mass – however, that is not enough to bring more people to get involved
- We need to find ways to bring people closer to the church which then leads to people appreciating liturgy
- People need to understand that they all have a place here and have gifts to share – how do we communicate this with the community and those who are trying to get closer to the church
- Share our expectations of what we want in the church
- Next Steps
- All council members agreed and voted on evangelization and stewardship as top two priorities for the next couple years
- How do we implement these two top priorities?
- Which topics from these two large buckets do we focus on?
- Once decided, start researching how to implement them, get feedback from the community
- Closing Prayer
