Well, it truly is the end of an era here at Christ the King.  Some of you may have seen Linda Fitzpatrick’s letter in the bulletin last week (reprinted this week, in case you missed it), and it’s true:  after 27 years as our Parish Secretary, Linda will be retiring in February!  As she says in her email, she’s been a part of Christ the King for over 60 years, and that won’t change after she retires.  (I promise her a one-year break before I start recruiting her to do volunteer work at the parish.)  But her contribution to the parish during her 27 years as a member of our Pastoral Team is truly exceptional.

I can tell you firsthand that working for a Pastor is a thankless job!  Linda has had all sorts of responsibilities during her time here:  maintaining all the parish records, being the liaison for several different parish ministries, organizing our Safe Environment Program, leading our Art & Environment volunteers, and assisting with the Religious Education Program, among others.  (I won’t even try to list them all.  I’m bound to miss something!)  But most importantly, she has been a tremendous source of support to all the priests and lay employees who have served here over the last three decades, and a wonderful pastoral presence to our parishioners.  I know that many of you will be quite surprised (and perhaps a little sad) to read her announcement.  But I know we are all grateful for her selfless service to the parish over these many years, and excited for her as she begins this new chapter in her life.

We’ll do something for Linda when her retirement date gets closer, but in the meantime please […]

This is the weekend in which we participate in the annual Bishop’s Appeal.  We’ll watch the appeal video at all Masses, and all parishioners will be given the opportunity to support this appeal.  This year our parish goal is $159,817.27. Any money that is given above that goal will be returned dollar-for-dollar to the parish.  We count on a certain amount of over-goal money as part of our operating budget, but last year we were fortunate to go even beyond that amount, which really helped us offset the drop in collections we experienced as we emerged from the pandemic.

The diocese counts on this annual appeal as part of their operating budget.  This budget funds the Catholic Schools Office, which supports all of the schools in the diocese; various pastoral offices that provide religious education, Hispanic ministry, community outreach, and all sorts of other pastoral services; and all sorts of administrative support functions for parishes, including things like finances and human resources. This past year I began serving on the diocese’s Budget Review Committee, and I can say firsthand that they run a very lean budget.  In fact, their commitment to controlling expenses led to a significant (approximately $40,000) reduction in our parish goal last year, and the goal has stayed at that level this year, as well.

I hope that all of you will find some way to participate.  (Remember, any school family who is receiving the active parishioner tuition discount is expected to contribute to the appeal.)  Even if you are unable to contribute financially at this time, I’d ask that you still return a pledge card indicating a $0 pledge.  This will not only keep us from sending you any follow-up emails (!), but […]

This month, for the first time since the COVID pandemic, we are once again scheduling liturgical ministers!  While our county is still in the midst of a surge in the delta variant, this is one step that we can safely take to get things a little closer to normal.

Until now, we’ve just been using volunteer lectors and MC’s who sign up month-to-month, and we have only been recruiting EMHC’s when there was no deacon at Mass.  Now you’ll notice that we have returned to having four Communion lines instead of two.  (No more making a huge lap around the church for those of you in the side sections!)  We still are not distributing the Precious Blood until we receive notice from the diocese that they are ready to resume this practice.  There are also certain ministries, such as sacristans and altar servers, that we won’t resume until we are able to move back into the sacristy.  (We’re getting closer…  We had been waiting on the new cabinetry to arrive for several months, but it’s finally here, and most of it has been installed.  We’re just waiting on a little more hardware in order to complete the installation, after which we can install the sinks and the flooring and then move in.)

We’ve done our best to update our ministry lists (adding new people who’ve filled out their Time & Talent Forms, while deleting people we know wish to retire from a particular ministry), but we need your help to make sure things run smoothly as we resume these ministries.  In particular, contact Teresa at the rectory (toross@christthekingonline.org) if you:

Don’t know whether or not you’re on the ministry list
Signed up for a ministry but don’t […]

I’m so excited that this weekend we’ve had our Parish Kickoff and Ministry Fair, in conjunction with our Time & Talent Weekend.  We’ve traditionally had a “Time & Talent Sunday” every year in order to highlight the many active ministries we have here at the parish, and to encourage folks to sign up for ways to get involved.  This year you’ll be able to sign up for ministries electronically, using a QR code that you can scan in the vestibule.  Of course, good old-fashioned paper copies of the forms will be available in the vestibule, as well.  Regardless of how you sign up, I hope that every parishioner will take a moment to complete a Time & Talent Form before the end of August. Many thanks to Linda Fitzpatrick for her work in organizing the Time & Talent process.

This year, of course, things are a little different, which adds both some importance and some excitement to the Time & Talent process.  Encouraging ministry signups is especially important this year because so many of our ministries have been dormant (or at least very scaled-down) during the time of the pandemic.  I’m really excited that we are in a position to re-start most of our parish ministries, but that also means that we need to start from scratch in terms of recruiting new volunteers.  A lot of these ministries will only be able to resume when we’ve got an adequate number of volunteers, so I’m hoping for a healthy number of Time & Talent forms!

But I also think this presents us with a golden opportunity, not just to get back to exactly where we were before COVID hit, but also to grow in new and exciting ways.  […]