MEET PARISHIONER Ken Kukorowski: Serving and Fostering Involvement in Our Parish Community & Beyond

Serving both the young and old is a weekly occurrence for parishioner Ken Kukorowski. Each week, Ken spends his Sunday teaching Faith Formation classes for third-graders. He visits four nursing homes on Tuesdays, and on Fridays, he’s at the food bank. But this is only a small portion of the service Ken does for our parish community.

“I’ve been a member of the parish here at Our Lady of Lourdes since 1985 when we moved here,” he says.

Ken first got involved in the parish community when his son was a student at Our Lady of Lourdes School. Since then, he’s participated in the Legion of Mary and That Man Is You!, and has served as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion.

“Activities at the parish came after being involved in school activities at Our Lady of Lourdes School,” Ken says. “After that, I got involved in helping raise money for the Bishop’s Annual Appeal.”

It was a significant moment for Ken when he realized the importance of the Bishop’s Annual Appeal. Having benefited in his early years from campus ministries in other parishes, Ken hadn’t realized the amount of support needed from the parish in order to fund the ministry.

“Campus ministries are supported by the dioceses, not the campus parish,” Ken says. “The kids in the pew when they’re going to school, putting a dollar in the basket, it doesn’t add up enough to pay the bills. Then I realized through participating here at Lourdes, all the dioceses around the country have campus ministries they support through the Bishop’s Appeal.

“I realized that the lifeline I had as a late teen and early 20-year-old Catholic involved in Catholic ministries, it was there because other people in regular parishes were supporting campus ministry,” he adds. “It happens across the country. It was an eye-opening experience for me, that someone else was paying the bill for me.”

This key realization moved Ken to support the Bishop’s Annual Appeal through a leadership position that he kept for many years, up until passing along the torch this past year. Ken also recognizes that the appeal assists our seminarian students, as well as supports the food banks where he devotes his time.

“Those three reasons make it very easy for me to support the Bishop’s Annual Appeal,” he says. “It’s been very easy for me to say ‘yes’ because I believe in the importance of those charities.”

Ken participates in many different ministries, giving of his time several days a week. But to him, it’s just a small percentage of the service that happens here at our parish. More than a decade ago, Ken had a conversation with a former parish staff member who told him that the parish relies on 200 people as volunteers to make things happen. This includes lectors, choir members, Extraordinary Ministers, altar servers, and everything else in between.

“There are a lot of very good people volunteering a lot of time in a lot of ways,” he says. “I don’t even understand or appreciate it, it happens and it makes everything at the parish level function very smoothly.”

While service is a top priority, Ken also makes time daily for prayer. As a Legion of Mary member, prayer is a key component to his ministry commitment.

“I think you can’t really talk about being a volunteer for seniors, or the Bishop’s Annual Appeal, or with children’s Faith Formation, or going to the food bank, without having a daily prayer life that gets me up on the bad days and keeps me going throughout the day,” he says.

Ken Kukorowski has been a member of the parish at Our Lady of Lourdes since 1985.