St. Francis-St Maxmilian Parish at 23965 Twenty-Three Mile Rd., Macomb, MI 48042 US

Jan. 2010 Council and commission minutes

St. Francis-St. Maximilian Council Meeting

Minutes from Jan 2010
The meeting started at 7:15 pm

Roll Call was conducted by sign in sheet. Present were: Fr. Chris Talbot, Gladys Bosel, Amos Clotfelter, Mario Campos-Escoffie, Roseanne DeBuck, Ian Gramer, Penny Landino, Judy Maselli, Kathy Quayhackx, Debbie Smith, Fred Smith, Carolyn Socia, Jim Van Belle, Carlos Valladares.

The agenda modified to add the continuation of the council review of the strategic planning report.
The minutes from Dec. 2009 were reviewed and modified to change the wording of strategic planning goal no. 2 to read “call all parishioners to ask for input on how the parish can better meet their needs.” Also, adding that the stewardship commission and Hispanic leadership committee bring back a plan no later than March.

Public comment: none present

Spiritual growth study: “Adult faith formation matters”. We reviewed segment 4 from the video and then discussed things that our parish could begin to do to foster new adult formation programs within our parish.

Commission reports:

Education: No Dec. meeting, no minutes. Classes resume Jan. 30th. Appreciation dinner is scheduled for Feb. 6th.

Worship: No Dec. meeting, no minutes. Many volunteers helped make the decoration of the church a success.

Christian Outreach: No Dec. meeting, no minutes. Giving tree program was able to help all those that asked for help. As usual many volunteer hours were needed to put this program together. About 170 families were helped. Carlos can obtain some new boxes for our Christmas trees.

Stewardship: No Dec. meeting, no minutes. Several major unplanned repairs have been needed in Dec. The commission is considering the need for a special collection to help offset these budget holes.

Hispanic Leadership Team: Minutes were handed out at the meeting. Mario reviewed the success of the Dec. devotions

Vicariate report: No report.

Fr. Chris’s Report: no report

Old Business: Amos has done follow up with Joe Balor on the items he wants to donate. Amos also asked about the status of the ministry boards from the commissions. Christian Outreach is still working on theirs. We continued our discussion of the strategic planning report. We modified goal number two as stated above. We agreed that the stewardship commission with develop a questionnaire to be handed out at the appreciation dinner as the first step in this process. The stewardship commission will also develop the rest of the process to accomplish the goal.

New Business: Carlos had a friend that was a DJ and has donated his equipment to us for use in our outdoor masses.

Bulletin Items:
The council resumed the study of “Adult faith formation” and discussed the needs within our parish
The council continued the review of the report from the Strategic planning committee. Two goals from this report were approved by the council: 1) Have an annual registration drive no later than Aug.-Sept., 2) call all parishioners to ask for input on how the parish can better meet their needs

The meeting was adjourned at 10:00

Stewardship commission minutes
Feb. 2010

We continued our study of the diocesan manual on stewardship. We discussed The concepts presented in part one: the call to share stewardship from the bishops letter “Called by Christ gifted by Christ”. This section highlighted the traditional catholic problem of associating stewardship solely with a call for money. We reviewed the many elements of stewardship in our lives other than our monetary donations. Our commission’s challenge is to bring about this more holistic understanding of stewardship throughout the parish. We see here a convergence of the Council’s study of the four part adult formation series with our mission.
We recommend to Council that the adult education priority for this year be the development of our understanding of true stewardship. The first step we recommend is that each Sunday liturgy contain a stewardship learning moment. The suggested material is in the manual that relates to each Sunday’s readings. We suggest that the commentator read this short thought during the quit time after communion. To enhance the effectiveness of this thought provoking moment, we suggest that the announcements be read before mass so that the last thought that they leave with is the learning moment. This weekly quote would also be placed in the bulletin.

We finalized arrangements for the appreciation dinner with our party coordinator Debbie Smith. It will be a western theme with instructional square dancing featured.

We discussed the council’s assignment to develop a plan to contact all parishioners no later than Aug. 2010. Phase one will be a questionnaire to be filled out before mass on a targeted Sunday. See attached draft. Phase two will be telephone contact of parishioners who did not participate in phase one. A different Questionnaire will be developed for this group.

Commissions need to start planning their budgets. We have asked Paul Joseph to prepare a half year summary of actual vs budget for all commissions use.

Joe Sturza asked for permission to hold a bottle drive to raise money for the Youth group. Approved

Christian outreach asked for permission to hold a giving tree like event for supplies needed for MCREST. Approved. This will allow many other parishioner who may not be able to give of their time to participate in supporting MCREST through heir food donations.

We reviewed a proposed layout of authorized storage uses of the social hall storage areas. We need to develop plans for other areas of our church space. When complete these will be issued along with instructions to all parish leaders and staff.

Worship Commission Minutes

January 11, 2010

In attendance: Deacon Dennis Father Chris Penny Landino

Laverne Jandura Janine Smith

Lori Gramer Annette Wright

1. Reviewed Christmas. Overall was favorable. Annette feels that the children need

more practice time. She would like to form a children’s choir that would sing more

often than just Christmas.

2. Father Chris will talk to the congregation about the significance of presenting the

gifts. The ministers of hospitality are finding it difficult to get volunteers.

3. Ash Wednesday there will be 9:00 am and 6:30 pm service of ashes in English and

a 7:30 mass with ashes in Spanish.

4. We are trying a new sign-up board for Eucharistic ministers, since most E. M.’s were

forgetting to sign the sheet. If this works better we will replace the board with one that

is nicer looking.

5. Annette is going to make copies of the creeds and the peace prayer and put them in

each of the hymnals.

6. Deacon Dennis will bless the food for Easter at noon, April 3^rd.

7. There will be a meeting with the Worship commission and members of the Hispanic

community to plan Holy Week on February 13^th at 12:30 pm.

8. Prior to the meeting, there was a meeting with Father Chris, Deacon Ken and the

masters of ceremonies to go over changes to the liturgy. They are minor processional

changes. Bob Landino will update the training manuals for senior altar servers.

CHRISTIAN OUTREACH COMMISSION

MEETING MINUTES: 1-18-2010

Discussed MCREST - plans, needs, food/supplies, coordinators for various jobs. General meeting on January 31 between 8:00 – 10:00 Masses. Katy and Brian Wagner gave notice that they will not be able to coordinate next year. Need to look for someone who can do general coordination of program. Several churches will be helping with meals. Prepared a giving garden to ask for supplies/food from parishioners. Will collect on February 6/7 weekend.

Discussed “job network ministry”. Margaret Vesprini will be coordinating. Has arranged for a job network meeting with Michigan Works! sending a speaker. Advertising in Vicariate newsletter and our bulletin and announcements each week. Meeting in February 23, at 10:00 a.m. Need more advertising for bulletin board in our bulletin

Discussed Giving Tree program. The intake interviews worked well, avoiding double dipping, duplicates. Also helped in identifying clients actual situation. Discussed some difficulties with identification of donations from other parishes. Tags were glued down with no identification other than other parish code. Need better communication with other parishes regarding size, gender or age. Some confusion during distribution. Need better supervision of cross-checking and identifying family bags for distribution. Written instruction sheets for workers may help.

Soup/Salad/Stations – will need to be organized at last minute. Do not have dates or plans from Worship. All Wednesdays? All weeks of Lent? All Stations? ROC-FM already set to do Stations for one of the weeks.

Education Committee Meeting Notes

1/11/10

Present: Jane Van Belle, Judy Jenkins, Carolyn Socia

Jane:

6 new RTI participants, 5 already baptized. There may be two in the Latino population. Bob & Margaret Ward’s grandchildren have expressed an interest in being baptized. One’s a 3^rd grade girl and one is a 6^th grade boy.

Carolyn: The strategic planning committee wanted us to look at their recommendations. Jane and Father have talked a little about it, but some fall under Education Committee. Father Chris is looking into a program, called Alpha, in use in Pontiac to focus on people who have fallen away from the Church. Each program is a meal, video, and light discussion. Father stressed that it should be non-threatening. Deacon Steve Mitchell is the contact. In Thou is another program being offered downtown.

Another idea would be to have a small round robin of activities focused on liturgy ie Advent, which involves families, adult and children. Add one more Saturday and make the full 2 hours a family time.

With sacramental preparation Jane has made an open invitation to anyone, not just parents, to participate. An effort is being made to respect people’s time, and perhaps complete presentations simultaneously in both languages.

Jane reopened the discussion of how to reorganize Confirmation classes. Joe suggested that if we switch, we could have 7^th and 8^th grade become Confirmation 1. It would be a two-year correction. Confirmation would ultimately occur in the fall.

Joe has a facebook site for Roc FM.

ROC FM is this Saturday. There will be a Super Bowl party again. The cost is $5.00 and a $5.00 gift card that will be used for MCREST.

Scout Sunday will also be Super Bowl Sunday. There will be one at 10:00 and and several at 12:00.

Father will try to come to Rainbow Saturday evening. Joe will be presenting two sessions.

People in the Hispanic population are excited about having a bible study in the summer. We may look into having a Vacation Bible School. This may be done in connection with another locl church.

We need to do something with the ministry board. Show it off during First Communion weekend.

Joe wants to know how we should handle the Timothy Awards .

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St. Francis-St Maxmilian Parish at 23965 Twenty-Three Mile Rd., Macomb, MI 48042 US - Jan. 2010 Council and commission minutes