2022!
January 2022| St. Joseph Catholic Church |
In this Email:
- Weekend Attendance
- High School Announcements
- Newman Center Soup Sign-up
- School Secretary Opening
- Sanctity of Human Life Sunday
- Bible Study on Mondays
- Tuesdays: “The Chosen”
- Spaghetti Dinner Fundraiser for School
- Traditional Latin Mass this Sunday
- Prayer Shawl gatherings
- Office closed January 17th
- Restarting Parish Council
Weekend Attendance
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High School
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Newman Center
Click here to sign up to donate soup for the college meal on Sundays!
Job Opening at School
We are continuing to recruit for a school secretary at St. Mary’s Catholic School.
Theresa wants to retire!
If interested, contact Theresa, school secretary attmiller@eupschools.org.
Our principal, Tim Vail at timothyvail@gmail.com
Chippewa County Right to Life
The monthly meeting of the Chippewa County Right to Life will be held at Free Methodist Church located at 505 W. 4th Ave. on Tuesday, January 11th, starting at 6:30 p.m. All are invited to come and participate. Please consider joining us in this important work.
Sanctity of Human Life SundayThe Sanctity of Human Life Sunday service will be held Sunday, January 16th at 2:00 p.m. at Holy Name of Mary Catholic Church located at 320 E. Portage Avenue. Sanctity of Human Life Sunday was created by a proclamation in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan. It is a day for all Americans to focus on the value of each and every human life. This year’s event will be cosponsored by Chippewa County Right to Life and Care Net Pregnancy Center. The service will include prayer, scripture, gospel message, and worship. There will be free will offering for Care Net Pregancy Center along with hors d’oeuvres and fellowship following the service.
Bible Study on Mondays
Our Bible study resumed on Mon. Jan. 3, 2022. You’re welcome to jump in!If you have questions, please contact Josie Benoit at (906) 635-1281 or email: jsife@hotmail.com.
Season 2 of “the Chosen”
We will resume viewing the series on Tuesday’s at 6:30 p.m. Please plan to join us!
Spaghetti Dinner Fundraiser
To benefit St. Mary’s School
Sunday, January 23rd
3:30 p.m. until 6:30 p.m.
Take-outs available and encouraged 🙂
$10 for adults
$5 for children 12 and under
Spaghetti and meatballs
Salad, bread, dessert, and beverage
50/50 raffle
Sponsored by The Friends of St. Mary’s School
Traditional Latin Mass
this Sunday at 4pm
Prayer Shawl Meetings
If you knit, crochet, or quilt please join us as we work on prayer shawls, mittens, scarves, etc. in the Parish Hall on the second Friday of the month from 9:30-10:45 a.m.
First meeting for the New Year will be Fri., Jan. 14th.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Office Will Be Closed
January 17th
Restarting Parish Council
Dear Parishioners,
Now that I’m in my second 6 year assignment as your pastor, I have seen the need to refresh how our parish makes decisions, and carries out the strategy to make St. Joseph’s an AMAZING parish! I will be reforming and reinspiring the Parish Council, and I’d like your help!
What is a parish council?
A team that shares responsibility for the success of the parish with the pastor. The goal of Parish Council members is to envision how we are to best carry out our mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ, and to share responsibility with the pastor in regards to the carrying out of this mission.
What is meant by a Parish Council? Here is a chart that shows different models:
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The bottom row describes who I’m looking for: passionate dreamers and planners who will answer the question: “where are we going and how will we get there?” I need a group of people who will help me grapple with big-picture pastoral issues and form a broad strategy.
Also, if I’m honest, we need some managers as well, since the driving question for our parish right now is “who will do what?”
Oftentimes in a parish (and we’re no exception), the lion’s share of the mission falls on a disproportionately small percentage of parishioners who are highly invested. Many efforts have fallen flat because they have bottle-necked with me personally. Too many eggs are in the Fr. Mike basket!
We had a great 5 year plan we outlined in 2016. We were actually really faithful to it and accomplished many of the goals we had set out to achieve. Unfortunately, our priorities over the past two years in ministering during a pandemic have changed how we lead, and it is time to get back to looking forward and being strategic.
The pandemic and ensuing social distancing precautions have caused us to lose ⅕ of our attendance, and our collections went down as well. What’s more, many of the groups and efforts we had formed ground to a halt. The situation did cause us to grow in other and unexpected ways, such as improving our online presence (not only our website and videos, but online prayer groups and Bible studies as well), a lot of cleaning and organizing, many buildings and grounds improvements, and some new outreach efforts.
On the other hand, we have a lot of new parishioners, and I’m not sure if they’ve been effectively welcomed or plugged in!
One way I envision the Parish Council to be effective is to focus on a series of thematic goals which we identify and work on together. A thematic goal is a single, temporary, and qualitative rallying cry shared by all members of the team.
How Parish Council members will be nominated and chosen:
- A position description will be in next week’s bulletin, along with nomination forms for 2 weeks. We will pass out bulletins at the beginning of Mass (instead of the end) so that you have them in hand.
- Please nominate those parishioners you know will be a good fit and meet the job description.
- We will also have an online option to nominate parishioners (via Flocknote) as well.
- Nominees will be contacted to see if they are willing to serve
- 4 new members will be decided on the weekend of February 5th and 6th!
- We will then schedule our first meeting with new parish council members, and write up a bulletin/flocknote introduction of the team.
- New members will be joining Fr. Romeo, Kaitlin Juengel, Jane McLeod and myself.
