If you are looking for a faith community to call home, I certainly hope you’d give St. Michael Catholic Church consideration. We want to be a welcoming and lively faith community that will lead you deeper into the mystery of God’s love. If you know someone who might be interested in our Catholic faith, please let me know. I’d love to talk to them and help them along the path to full Communion with us. They need not make any commitments. I am happy to help anyone explore how they feel about and relate to God. Do you want to become more involved in your own faith and learn how to have a deeper and more intimate relationship with Jesus and his Church? Talk to me (706-267-1073). I love pastoring in a small faith community where I am blessed to be able to walk with people on their faith journeys in a very personal way.
I am grateful to Mark Schroder for presenting at all our Masses this weekend our Annual Parish Financial Report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2018. It is healthy for our faith community to have a sense of transparency regarding the temporal management of our finances. Our church mission is funded by your generosity. Your contributions are used to fund parish ministries in the areas of faith formation and evangelization, pay salaries, and maintain our buildings including the buildings used by TIMA. Your generous donations to the BAA and other special collections that aid the needy in our community and beyond demonstrate your commitment to our church mission. The staff – Mary, Ryan, Katie, and Ginny – all the volunteers, and I will continue to work very hard to make St. Michael’s as strong as possible, both spiritually and temporally, for the greater glory of God.
I am grateful for the willingness of parishioners and visitors to support the church through the Sunday offertory. Fundraisers and Capital Campaigns in my opinion are necessary evils and hopefully are only turned to as a last resort. I think our parish is currently in a strong financial position because so many of you express your gratitude to God through the offertory. This is an important element of stewardship and as we move forward I will be offering more formation on what it means to be a good steward of the gifts that God has entrusted to us.
There has been some much-needed sprucing up of my residence. It is a work in progress and you will be able to get a sense of it at the wine and cheese after the Town Hall Meeting on September 16
th. I am grateful to Mary Ann Miller and Susan Ason for their help and guidance. Later this winter some extra attention will be given to the parish grounds. I am a little sheepish about the expense involved in these projects because one of the spiritual components of my Jesus Caritas Fraternity of Priests is a call to live a simple lifestyle. Yet, during the school years when it was necessary to focus our financial resources on the school, other things were neglected. We’ve done well this year in updating the sound system in Church and eventually, I’d also like to see our beautiful sanctuary updated with new flooring and definitely a “worthier” ambo or pulpit.
But all of this is a bit of navel glazing and I’d like for us to get beyond these projects as soon as possible so that we can focus on projects that have an outward thrust in terms of building up God’s Kingdom here on Tybee. Overall, we are in a good position to move forward, but we do continue to face many of the same challenges other parishes face:
● How can we get our inactive parishioners to own their faith and be active in the parish?
● How can we reach out to our community to evangelize and grow our faith?
● How can we engage our young people and keep them connected to our faith?
No matter how generous you are in this present time, these challenges can have a significant impact on our future financial health. We march toward a future with hope, relying not only on our own strength but on the Lord, who remains faithful to His covenant.
Our Parish Day of Renewal will be a very important moment in determining how we will move forward. I’d ask all of our parishioners to please mark your calendars for that day, October 20
th. And again, I am so very grateful for your generosity to your Faith Community.
Mark Your Calendars
Sunday, September 16th, Town Hall Meeting
Sunday, September 30th, Parish Feast Day
With Bishop Boland celebrating the 11 am Mass
On the occasion of the 50
th Anniversary since he
was our pastor here at St. Michael Parish