Haven of Mercy Catholic Community Highlights

The Haven of Mercy Catholic Community committee met on the evening of Thursday, Sept. 16 at Holy Family Parish Hall. We added two representatives to the committee: Val Kula to represent Mary of Lourdes School and Nicolette Gindele for Holy Family Parish. Fr. Jimmy and Fr. Ben are committed to a pulpit swap once a month during the months of October thru December. Ongoing discussion continued with a communications strategy for the planning process at large: a summary of the minutes will be provided in the bulletin, on Facebook, and in the monthly newsletter for the Little Falls Tri-Parish. Suggestion boxes and copies of minutes are in the entrances of the six churches marked with signs. A prayer was approved that will be prayed before Mass in our parishes. They could be placed in the back of hymnals at church. They will be put on refrigerator magnets that would be available for families to have on their home refrigerators. A Catholic company, Lighthouse Strategic Solutions, will be coming to do two phases with the staff of the six parishes. The first is to do an organizational assessment by doing confidential interviews with each of the staff of the six parishes gathering from them individually what they do, what their strengths are, and what their suggestions would be with coming together as six parishes administratively. Phase two will be to assist in hiring a business manager that could serve the six parishes by the beginning of the new year.

It was discussed that Mary of Lourdes School is something the six parishes share together. Fr. Ben will be sure to include Fr. Jimmy in the schedule for presiders at MOL school Masses. It is an idea that MOL students could do the ministries on Sundays at each of our parishes once a month to bring the Haven of Mercy parishes and school community more together. Refreshments and fellowship could be offered after. Students could also offer hospitality after the Wednesday and Thursday school weekly Masses.

Having a common bulletin was discussed for the six parishes. It might not be the right time until we would have a business manager that could help with the process. It would be good at some point to have one person on staff be the one to officially receive the various events and communications that would go into the bulletin. We will seek the suggestion of Lighthouse through insights also gained by their interviews with staff.

Website design was also discussed. This discussion involved the possibility of a common website for the Haven of Mercy Catholic Community and Jan. 1 as a possible launch date. A subcommittee was created to work on this, and it would require a lot of work to make this a reality.