I haven’t written much about On Mission for the Church Alive recently, but given that major announcements are going to be made at the end of this month, I figure I probably ought to. Hopefully this will provide some clarity as to what’s coming.
On Thursday, April 26, all the clergy of the diocese will meet at the seminary for the annual spring clergy convocation. Normally, these things serve as a chance for some continuing education and spiritual enrichment (and dinner!); this time will be more about praying together and being commissioned for On Mission. At the convocation, the new parish groupings will be announced and the clergy will receive their new assignments.
That weekend, April 28 and 29, each priest will read a letter from the bishop to his parish, informing the parish of its new grouping and which clergy will staff that grouping. This letter will also be mailed to every household in the parish, and included in the following week’s bulletin. And, knowing me, will be emailed to you as well. In some cases, there will be an entirely new clergy team coming in; in other cases, there will be only a few changes; and, I suppose, there are some cases where staffing will remain the same. No staffing changes will go into effect at the end of April. All changes will be effective in October.
Why the long delay? Well, the hope is to make the transition as seamless as possible. The last time the diocese did a major reorganization like this, in the early 1990s, well over two-thirds of all the priests were moved – and this was at a time where there were almost 600 guys in active ministry. It was chaos. We’ve learned from that, we hope, and we’re doing it this way because this allows for the outgoing and incoming clergy to meet multiple times, and for incoming clergy to meet with the parish staff multiple times. A critical part of these meetings will be the development of new Mass schedules that take into consideration the needs of the parishes, seating capacity, number of priests, and other factors. These schedules will be announced during the summer. Our Mass schedule will, in all likelihood, change as a result of this process. How much so is yet to be determined.
Monday, October 15, is implementation day. New assignments and new Mass schedules begin that day. No parishes will close or merge in April, or even in October. Starting in October, we begin the process to eventually merge parishes, and in some cases (not ours), we begin the process to eventually close buildings.
So we’re still two weeks away from any real news. Our task until then is to continue praying that our hearts are open to the direction the Holy Spirit is taking us as a diocese and as a parish. Our task after the announcements come out is to continue to make that same prayer, so that we can be successful in our mission of building up the Kingdom.