A few weeks ago, a letter written by Fr. David was sent to your home describing, among other things, the challenges of our current Parish Council structure. Specifically, the current Parish Council is structured in a way that isolates it from the Parish Staff, resulting in very little collaboration between the two groups. Given this challenge, the Parish Council and the Parish Staff met on Tuesday, March 9, to review and reflect on a model proposed for a new Parish Advisory Council to the Pastor.

One of great joys of this parish is people’s willingness to be of service to help continue to make us a better parish as well as their willingness to share their opinions and thoughts. The team of 25 people spent about 90 minutes discussing the benefits and values, cautions and weaknesses of the proposed model as well as possible alternatives.

The team perceived that the proposed model should improve collaboration, improve communication, better utilize our limited parish resources, make us all more connected and included, and has us, all, working together. However, the team also had some real cautions regarding the proposed model. A weakness that surfaced was a consensus feeling that the proposed new structure was too big and at the same time did not ensure everyone was included as being represented or connected to staff. Right sizing and inclusiveness are the real challenge!

As you would expect from this team, lots of thoughts were shared about how to improve the proposed model. The proposed model as well as the output from the meeting are available as Downloads on the right side of this page.

Next step. The Parish Staff as well as the Parish Council will consider the output from the meeting separately and share their thoughts with Fr David. With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, my hope is we will move toward a structure that addresses a number of the current shortcomings and makes us more effective as a parish in accomplishing the mission that Jesus Christ gave us so long ago: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit.”

As always, we welcome your comments. Feedback on the proposed parish vision / mission statement has been light and I encourage you to please e-mail your comments to SJCParishCouncil@stjohnofthecross.org

Thanks for all of your prayers and support.

Steve Bock, Chairman
Parish Council