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

III. The Success of our Development Program

In setting out to build relationships with Catholic CU alumni, parents of our students, parishioners, and friends of our ministry, we have come a long way in one year. In order to adequately reflect the inclusive nature of our mission, that it doesn’t only refer to parishioners but includes all of those connected with Catholicism at the University of Colorado, we have tweaked our name and branding to the “St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center.” This has enable us to invite, include and welcome all those connected with our mission without canonically changing our status as a parish. We started the year with zero names in our database and have increased it to 5200. To these 5200 we have sent out a great deal of information in letters and our newsletter and have contacted many for face to face visits. The purpose of these is to build relationships and partners for our ministry: to help us with advice on campus ministry, volunteer, pray for us and help us financially. We set out to raise $165,000 outside of the offertory collection, to take pressure off needing to provide for everything from the offertory and to grow campus ministry. I am happy to announce that we met our goal for the first year and received an additional $50,000 immediately following the end of the fiscal year. In addition to this, our Electronic Funds Transfer program within the parish has tripled over this past year providing a new stability and growth to our offertory income. For the first time in six years we ended the fiscal year with a small surplus. We intend to continue in our efforts in the coming year and hope to raise $400,000 outside of the offertory for campus ministry. This frees up the offertory monies so that they can be used to strengthen our already thriving ministries aimed at the whole parish, things such as our renewed Parish Council, Liturgy of the Word for Children, youth group, foodbank and liturgical ministries. In late September the Finance Council will present a complete report of this past fiscal year.

The focus on and growth of campus ministry and our development efforts does not mean, in any way, the lessening, shrinking or dissolution of normal parish ministries, rather it enables us to enhance them. They are complementary and reciprocal. We are seeing and will continue to see that fidelity to our primary mission in campus ministry benefits everyone.

IV. The Vision for Campus Ministry

The relational and financial aspect presented above is not the end or goal, it is a symbol of our priorities and our current and coming success. Having an excellent, dynamic and holistic campus ministry program is the goal. With that in mind, we have structured campus ministry with a framework of “the four areas of formation”, written about by Pope John Paul the Great, in order to evaluate our existing programs and to plan for the future. Thinking in terms of the four areas of formation, the human, intellectual, spiritual and apostolic, we have been able to look at what we offer, where we are lacking and begin to add ministry to suit the needs of all who come to us. This year we have added ministry through the on-campus lecture series, adult education, bookstore and library in the area of intellectual formation. We are planning to offer academic courses for credit in Church history and theology in the near future. In human formation we have increased our offerings in social activities to build community, instituted Friday movie nights, Theology of the Body classes, studies on the nature and dignity of women, and formed men and women’s groups of accountability and prayer. In spiritual formation the Buffalo Awakening Retreats, FOCUS Bible Studies and discipleship program’s continue to be strong and grow but we have also added hours of Confession, Adoration, spiritual direction, hosted vocational discernment events and are planning a new silent retreat program. In apostolic formation we continue to provide opportunities to serve the university, Boulder community and wider world through mission trips, reaching out in the dorms and on campus, pro-life activity and service projects to the poor and marginalized in the community.

There are 28,000 students at the University of Colorado and we are only reaching a small fraction of them. Some of our primary goals are to be more visible on campus, more engaged with the university and bold in witness so as to give everyone an opportunity to know about us and through us, Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church.