A Vision for our Parish

Friends, peace be with you. 

On Saturday, June 10, I had an opportunity to meet with some of the leadership within our parish to craft a Vision Statement that will guide our efforts for the next 5-6 years. It is…

“God unveils the sacred through sacraments; we, as Catholics in the heart of our community, cooperate by shepherding seekers to Him.”

I would ask that this sentence be included in all our communications and that it be something people read along with an opening prayer at parish meetings. 

Just to highlight a few of the points we wanted to bring out, it begins with God and God’s act of searching for us through sacraments. We watched a powerful video called The Veil Removed and wanted to include imagery from it in the Vision Statement. Special thanks to Deacon Dan Hoeger for insisting that we include the sacraments as something uniquely Catholic, not just the seven particular Sacraments (though they are the center of our spirituality, especially the Eucharist), but all the ways God becomes incarnate for us in a sacramental way. Our role, though secondary, is to be in the heart of our community, not outside it or above it, collaborating and cooperating with God to bring seekers to him. We felt the word seekers communicated that God is shepherding through us, not just those in the pews or even those who have fallen away from the practice of the faith, but all those who seek (and are being sought after) by God. 

Our next step will be to meet to craft 2-3 SMART goals that will be based on this vision. As you can probably tell, our Vision Statement is meant to be aspirational, to set a tone of what we are to do as a parish. We are meant to be the vessel whereby seekers are shepherded to God. The SMART goal session will be more concrete moving us toward action. Please pray that God will reveal exactly how He wants to do that in this parish.