Parish Strategic Initiatives
“The people without a vision will perish”… (Proverbs 29:18)
Every three years, the Pastor and Pastoral Council undertake the Strategic Initiative (SI) process. Out of this process the Strategic Initiatives are generated and shared with the staff and parish. These initiatives focus and guide the direction of the parish in terms of setting and acting on goals and priorities for our community.
The Strategic Initiative process is led by the Pastoral Council. As stewards of the Mission Statement, they form themselves in the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church by reflecting upon Vatican and US Bishops’ writings and other resources, which articulate a vision for the diverse aspects of parish life. The Pastoral Council holds a number of listening sessions with parishioners. In addition to the listening sessions the Pastoral Council conducted a comprehensive review of the information gathered from The Best Practices for Parishes (BPP) Program and the Partners in Ministry Forum. These two programs provided input from over 700 parishioners who come from all walks of life, involvement levels and areas of parish-life.
In the spirit of the BPP process, the Pastoral Council decided to enhance the SI process by removing the three year requirement and migrate to a process where each initiative is based on objective rather than time. This creates the ability to review the initiatives annually through a three year sliding window and allow more time for the successful implementation throughout the community.
All of the information and feedback is was organized and presented to the staff for additional input. The Pastoral Council meets over a number of weeks to identify and define the themes heard from the parishioners. From these meetings, the initiatives are drafted, refined and finalized.
After this, the staff is asked to develop goals and objectives that can accomplish the initiatives over the next three years. The initiatives and goals and objectives are then shared with the parish as a whole.
The Strategic Initiatives for 2011 - 2014 are:
