Next Sunday, Aug. 18, from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., we’ll have a simple and fun event at the St. John the Baptist Parish Center. It’s “Bother the Father: Scripture Edition”! Bring your questions about anything in the Bible, and I’ll try to answer them — or at least we’ll have a good discussion about them! I’ll have a prize to hand out at the end for whoever asked the hardest question.
 Many thanks to all who came to our in-person and virtual listening sessions to share their thoughts. Your input about what helps us grow in faith and about the obstacles that people face when they want to volunteer helped me immensely. I think this is a good year to focus on the ways we support our members in growing in faith, and what might make it easier for people to take their first steps in serving with us.

Some questions came up at the listening sessions that I thought might be of general interest, so I’m going to answer them here, too.

How can we know what is going on in our parish and the different opportunities to get involved?

A few weeks back we published a Ministries, Events, & Organizations booklet. These are available in the vestibules of our churches. Take a look and see if something catches your eye! You can find a link to the digital version on the home page of our website (www.sspstl.org).

Why do we have so many parish meetings on Sundays afternoons? That’s important family time!

My impression has been that evening meetings can be difficult for families with busy schedules or for people who have trouble driving at night. Also, for parish meetings that might be of interest to many parishioners, such as the Annual Business Meeting, I like having them on Sunday around our Mass times to encourage people to come straight from Mass. In the months ahead I’ll try scheduling some meetings on weeknight evenings and we’ll see how that goes.

How are our parish finances? It seems like we keep having air conditioners break and it takes a while to get them fixed.  

We’ll make a full report on our parish finances in November, so for the moment I’ll focus on the part of this question focused on repairs at our three campuses. Thankfully, St. John the Baptist, St. Stephen Protomartyr, and Immaculate Heart of Mary parishes each brought considerable savings to our shared project of uniting as one parish with three churches and a school. So we have the savings to make necessary repairs, like repairs to our air conditioning.

There are two reasons why those repairs sometimes take a while. The first and smaller problem is that things break unexpectedly, sometimes right before we need them. The second and larger problem is that we have many demands on the time and attention of our volunteers, staff, and leaders. That can slow down our progress in getting things fixed. For example, in the press of other business I lost track of the repair needed at the Father Keaney Center. Thankfully, the parish staff eventually noticed and reminded me, but my mistake meant there was a considerable delay in starting the repairs. By the way, if you have skills for maintenance, cleaning, or construction, we’d love to have your help on the teams of volunteers that help keep our buildings going. Also, we’re looking to hire additional maintenance team workers, so if you know any good candidates, please send them our way.  

Why was there a window boarded up in the Father Keaney Center?

Prior to beginning the repair of the air conditioner at the Father Keaney Center, we had agreed to let the KTK Community Theater group use the Father Keaney Center for the show at the end of their summer camp. The repair was partially complete when it was time for the show, so we paused repairs while the show went on. This meant we had to board up a window temporarily until the repairs were completed.
 
How can we be one united parish if we have so many different groups? For example, we have three groups for women and two groups for men.

I’ve heard strongly contrasting perspectives on this question since our merger on Aug. 1, 2023. Some people advocate for a quick union of all the similar groups in our parish. Some people think we should let unity come little by little with time. I don’t think that there is one right answer to the question, and the kind of group makes a difference.

After some prayer and discussion, the message I’ve decided to give to our ministries, organizations, and events is twofold. First, keep doing the good you’ve been doing with the people with whom you love doing it. Second, let’s all unite around our shared mission and vision. That does mean making some sacrifices and doing some things differently than in the past. One example: for the sake of working well together, we now ask our ministries, organizations, and events to give our parish staff six weeks’ notice when they’ll need staff support of one of their activities or events.

One reason I’ve taken this path is my past experience in other parishes. Even in parishes untouched by consolidations, it can happen that similar groups spring up because of different social connections. For example, you might have a group of young dads interested in starting a men’s ministry even though there is a long-running men’s group that tends to draw older parishioners. Our St. John the Baptist campus is home to several wonderful agencies that serve immigrants, and each one has a different focus and different capacities. I wonder if those examples give a model for a diverse parish life that has lots of different opportunities. It seems worth trying. What do you think?
 
God bless you!