St. Jude Pastoral Council

Minutes of monthly meeting held at 6:30 pm

On Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Present:                John LaFond (Chairman), Maureen Albi (Vice Chair), Fr. Dave Rogerson (Pastor), Sr. Betty Schumacher (Pastoral Assistant), Jerry Kuntz (Parish Administrator), Rick Casolary (Youth Group), Molly Boll, Genevieve Cahoon, Jan Doran, Tim Duffy, Colleen McLaughlin, and Lauren Sing and several spouses.     

Apologies:            Tom Cast and Art Mussman

Opening Prayer:  The meeting began at 6:35 pm with a prayer led by John.

Old business:       

·        Introduction of New Members to the Parish: Thanks to Maureen who drafted biographies on new PC members for inclusion in the weekly Sunday bulletin to introduce the new PC members to parishioners. The biographies will be republished in the bulletin with photographs in the near future.

·        Listening Sessions: Tim updated the meeting about the progress of plans for listening sessions. Since numerous parishioners are involved in more than one ministry, we need to find out what we are missing to encourage more people to get involved. The make-up and demographics of the Parish have changed and are changing dramatically, with many various cultures.

The first two listening sessions will begin the week of December 7^th and pilot groups will include between 10 to 12 people, and will continue after the holidays. The groups have been broken up by age as follows: <20 years of age, between 20 and 40 years of age, between 40 and 60 years of age and those older than 60 years of age. The first session to be held on Tuesday, 8^th, will be with the group of those older than 60. The second session will be held on Thursday 10^th with those who are 20 and younger.

The sessions with the two remaining groups will be held during 2^nd and 3^rd weeks of January.

The nature of the sessions will be to take a positive approach and will not be in the form of a questionnaire. Members of this subcommittee have tried to reach out to include people who are not currently involved in any parish activities.

                           The members will try to determine what is meaningful to participants and what they would like to see done better. Differences and similarities between the various groups will be analyzed and the knowledge integrated. The process will be a slow one, and will continue during Fr. Dave’s sabbatical. It is important that information is consistent and communication will be key.

Since this was intended to be a short meeting before our Christmas dinner celebration, the meeting was closed.

Closing Prayer:    The meeting closed with listening to recordings of the opening and closing songs from the recent Ecumenical Musical Gathering.

Fr. Dave offered grace before dinner at 7:15 pm.