Church of St. Mary at Clinton Heights

From Dave Hans

Good Morning

Thank you for allowing Lora and me to talk to you for a few minutes this morning.  As we have in the past, I want to share some of my views on the treasure aspect of our stewardship.

You will see in this weekend’s bulletin, a Parish “health check”.  Sharing this summary along with today’s trustee message will help you better understand our current environment.  We welcome your comments, questions and input on any of these messages.

So, let’s get right to it.  For the fiscal year that ended on June 30^th, our regular weekly offertory collection was down almost 4% from the previous year.  This is, unfortunately, on top of the 2016/17 decrease of just under 3% from a high point of $385K in collections during the 2015/16 fiscal year.

During this same time, we have done a good job of maintaining our base day to day operating expenses.   With that said, in the bulletin summary you will see our expenses during the past fiscal year increased significantly due to the unexpected cost of our roof repairs.

Some of this expense was offset slightly by eliminating operating expenses associated with our annual Auction and Gala.  However, we now also lose the Gala income, which over the past six years continued to grow and add to our yearly income stream.

What does this mean?  We need to focus on the offertory collection, which makes up more than 80% of our Parish Revenue.

Year to date, a full third of a way through our current fiscal year, regular offertory collection is down almost $10K against our budgeted offertory plan.  Unfortunately, the deficit fluctuates each week, making forecasting for the future more difficult.

Once again, I repeat my plea for you to thoughtfully consider a regular and consistent donation in the weekly offertory collection. Today, just under a third of our families who receive envelopes use them on a weekly basis.  In addition, another 16% of families use e-giving.  These numbers are even smaller when you consider the total number of families actually registered at the Church of St Mary.

Using envelopes or the e-giving process is the easiest way for you to provide this regular contribution.  E-giving, especially, allows you to tailor your personal giving –weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever schedule is best for you and your family budget. If you have questions about this process, please reach out to me.

A regular and consistent weekly offertory income will help the parish finance committee create a more comfortable budget planning process for the church.

Over the past several months we have been blessed to welcome many new parishioners and families to our community.  These new families contribute to the diversity of stewardship at St Marys.

Attendance in our faith formation program is growing in leaps and bounds.  This is a testament to the outstanding contribution from Maureen and all the volunteer catechists and supporters. Unfortunately, we do not see as many of these new families joining us at mass.

Father Tom, as you know by now, is passionate about deepening our call to discipleship which starts with sharing the celebration of the mass as a community each week. If you know a family member or friend who has grown apart from our community, please invite them to join us for a Sunday mass.  Ask them to listen to Father Tom’s homily and experience the love and compassion in our parish community.

In closing, thank you for listening to and reflecting on these messages.  Your stewardship of time, talent and treasure is so critical to our parish life.  If I may quote from our Reigniting our Faith through Discipleship video,  we are all “the Community of God at St Mary’s”

From Lora Santilli

Thanks Dave, switching gears a little I’d like to turn our attention to a different kind of treasure – the human kind!

Let me start by saying – wow – what a wonderful event last night! More than a hundred of us joined together in fellowship to share an International inspired pot luck supper! These types of events are exactly what we heard you were looking for and the turnout was fantastic – with a manageable level of coordination by the planning committee. Another objective we were looking to meet!

This past year we were blessed to share in the celebration of our various Sacraments with 22 baptisms, 38 First Communicants, 30 Confirmandi, and 3 weddings. And with the help of the Bereavement committee we ushered 25 souls into the Kingdom of God and continued to provide support and guidance for those families.

As Dave said, our Faith Formation program continues to flourish with explosive growth in grades 2, 6 and 9 – critical faith formation years. We also have one catechumen in the RCIA program who will receive the Sacraments at the Easter Vigil this spring. Thank you to our Catechists and all who support them.

Our outreach to the poor has remained steady. Many of our parishioners volunteer at Concerns U and Circles of Mercy and in other charitable organizations. We have been collecting bottles and cans to help purchase books for the Concerns U Christmas store. Our Reverence of Life Committee continues to help with collections to assist in protecting human life and dignity. And we continue to grow our ministry to the homebound and those in nursing homes. There are so many who need our help – please continue to do so!

Our Liturgical ministries continue to grow as well but we can always use more servers, lectors, ministers of Holy Communion and greeters and ushers. And Carl continues to grow the music ministry, especially with the children.

Our parish center actively supports the community. For example we host AA, NA and FA on a weekly basis. Let me share a little story about that. We have been meeting regularly for the Reigniting Our Faith Through Discipleship Initiative – which by the way has raised almost $150,000 already – about one quarter the way to our goal. Anyway… as I was coming in for one the ROF meetings, I noticed the parish hall was set up for a large group – lots of chairs. And during our meeting I heard intermittent celebratory applause. They were still gathered when our meeting was over and I asked Father Tom who the group was. He said it was the Narcotics Anonymous group. I was surprised as I knew they normally met in the classroom at the end of the hall. He said they’ve outgrown the classroom! What an amazing resource we can provide to those who are successfully pulling themselves out of a dark and dangerous time in their lives.

So, in addition to the goal that Dave mentioned earlier to increase attendance at Sunday Mass, Father Tom has 2 other hopes and dreams:

1) To provide more opportunities for growth in discipleship: things like small faith sharing groups, young adult outreach, adult faith formation, and other activities to stimulate spiritual growth.   and

2) Grow our social justice ministries and awareness.

Both of these can be accomplished with the help of a few folks willing to plan and carry out just one activity in support of either of these goals. Sound like something you are interested in?  Please see Father Tom, Dave or I and let’s get started!

Thank you all for listening and thank you for everything you do to make St. Mary’s a beautifully vibrant community!