Summer Parish Potlucks and The State of the Parish: Part I

I. Introduction

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever! As you know, we have had a series of parish potlucks this summer, as we did last year, in order to provide me an opportunity to present on the “state” of the parish, the accomplishments and developments of the past year, and to discuss with you some future plans and receive your feedback. I have found these to be wonderful experiences that increase communication, collaboration and community. We will continue to use these as the forum for major decisions affecting us at the parish.

I realize because of summer travel schedules and other responsibilities that many of you were unable to make one of them. Therefore, I plan to use this column for the next several weeks as an forum to present the same material. Unfortunately, it isn’t as interactive or dynamic but we will have to make due. To all those that came and gave feedback, thank you for your participation and enthusiasm.

This past year has indeed been a great one, for me personally, but more importantly for the parish. This year’s discussion was framed by last years’ “recasting of our mission” and “vision for the future.” If you recall last year, we talked about the nature of our mission—that we were established to serve the University of Colorado, that we are the campus ministry parish. Indeed, Boulder does not need four parishes, we exist specifically to care for the spiritual, intellectual and evangelical needs of the flagship university of our state. Everyone is welcome at St. Tom’s. But it is also true that if we put our mission to the university first, if we order our “loves” properly, then all of our “loves” will find their proper place and flourish. By being faithful to our primary mission, everyone who calls St. Tom’s home will flourish. As you will see in future columns, this is exactly what is happening.

Toward this end of recasting our mission and vision, the Parish Council revised the parish mission statement and along with the Finance Council and Parish Staff approved the hiring of Petrus Development, a consulting firm dedicated to the renewal of Catholic campus ministry in the United States.

II. The Development of Relationships

One of the unique things about being a campus ministry parish is that our ‘faithful’ include many more people than those that attend our church on Sunday. Our community includes the Catholic alumni of CU, the parents of our students, those who long to see a vibrant Catholic community at CU along with all those that choose St. Tom’s as a parish. It is our responsibility to be as inclusive as possible, to involve all those who have a stake in our mission and to develop a relationship with them, enlisting their support in various ways: spiritually, financially, personally. Thus, we hired Petrus Development to help us in these efforts and a Director of Development, Megan Dillon. The goal is nothing short of building up a world class campus ministry, proportionate in excellence to the University of Colorado.

I look forward to writing to you next week to tell you of the success we have had in these things this past year as well as many other aspects of our life together. You might want to keep this insert to join up with the forthcoming columns.