Growing Pains

As you have probably heard, we are in the process of hiring someone to fill the position of Faith Formation Director. It would be a good time to provide for some updates about the future of our programs as well. We continue to have a large number of children in the parish and that is not slowing down. The religious education program is continuing to hold steady with the number of students in it staying around 375 kids, and we are still looking for some more volunteers to help out as catechists for next year as well as other helpers. This coming year we are going to be bringing back the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program as well. I wanted to thank the volunteers that are making this happen again. Since we only have one staff member for all of our programs, we rely heavily on the large number of volunteers to keep these programs running. We are also looking at hiring a part time assistant, but we are currently limited by budget and also physical space for another person. Currently in the offices, Fr Ryan and I share an office, Principal Hade and Vice-Principal Hazel share an office (along with other programs), and Nick and Jeremy share an office. There is an office space expansion that will be included with the Phase III construction, and will be expanded further in Phase IV, but these are a few years out. One of the challenges with the limited staff is that a good number of our other programs are led by volunteers and ideally, in the future, we will have more staff to continue to grow those programs. We are always open to people volunteering their time to help us to grow our programs and opportunities for the people of the parish. I am very grateful for the many people who step up and do this for our families. This fall we will take a look at where we are with the budget and then look at adding more Faith Formation staff if we can. I know that it is a priority and I hope that we will be in the position to hire an additional person soon.

The day school continues to grow and we are getting close to being completely full; we will be in the area of 385 plus kids for the 24-25 school year. It is incredible to see where we are now. My first school year here we had grown to 176 from 153, and we are over double that number now. It is incredible to see the continued growth that we have had over the years, but that will slow down until we get to the later phases of construction to make us a three-section school in the next couple of decades.

Our adult faith programs continue to grow as well, with the women’s bible study, the other bible study, faith with Deacon Fred, book groups, OCIA (formerly RCIA) and others. We are such a good and vibrant parish, and I hope that continues. Yes, we still plan on continuing to grow our staff, but in the meantime, thank you for all of the people who help and volunteer their time to help.

God bless,
Fr. Ken