Opportunities and Challenges Summary

Opportunities and Challenges Presented by Our Parish Family

Here are the opportunities and challenges presented by our parish family and summarized by your PFAC. Three themes are identified: proclaiming our faith, reaching out to the wider community, and growing as a parish family.

1. Proclaiming Faith

Evangelize our parish communities and the wider community:

• Provide training, knowledge, and tools to help our parishioners know how to evangelize and witness to their faith

• Promote an understanding of the “why” of Catholicism  Invite people to “come and see”

Promote life-long faith formation for people of all ages:

• Support growth in understanding of the faith through activities, and sacramental growth opportunities

• Connect liturgy with growth in faith understanding and practice

Serve parents in forming a lifelong faith for their children and a renewal of faith for themselves:

• Address challenge of outside influences

• Provide resources and support for young parents

• Instill active and lifelong faith in their children

• Provide support and education after sacraments

• Serve families with faith programs

Serve youth and young adults in our parish communities:

• Address the lack of youth programs

• Provide for leadership of youth and young adult efforts

• Stay connected with youth after confirmation

• Provide outreach to college-age young adults

• Address negative external influences

2. Reaching out to the Wider Community

• Address the physical needs faced in the community, including support for the homeless, assistance with economic hardships, and attention to the needs of the elderly

• Support ministries and services in the wider community through communication and promotion of existing resources

3. Growing as a Parish Family

Acknowledge and address the workload on our priests:

• Two priests for 90,000 people

• Identify ways that lay faithful can help

• Adjust expectations – “how can I support my priest?”

• Initiate practical and prayerful support for vocations

Address the large geographical area, population size, and physical barriers that present challenges for our parish family:

• Respond to recent large population growth and engage possible new parishioners

• Address the desire among parishioners to maintain small home feeling and have services close by

• Grow our visibility to the wider community

• Provide clear, frequent and consistent communication and collaboration within the parish family

• Address the concern that some people feel excluded or invisible

• Address particular needs for communication and engagement between and among the English and Spanish language communities beyond mass

Build community and promote belonging:

• Cultivate community by providing opportunities for people of all ages to gather and grow in faith

• Promote collaboration within community to foster the feeling of family

Invite the next generation of parishioners to take an active role in supporting and sustaining parish life