Over the past month, you’ve seen our Director of Music & Liturgy, Jessica Roberts, include several things in the bulletin to keep you updated on our music program.  In particular, she has written a few columns to let you know how we intend to restart our music program as we give all of our parish ministries a reboot after they slowed down during the pandemic.  Jessica has done a marvelous job of providing beautiful music for our liturgies almost singlehandedly for over a year and a half, but I know that like all of us, she’s anxious to be able to share the ministry with cantors and choirs again.

Part of the reason we’re giving so much attention to the liturgical music program is that we see this “reboot” as a golden opportunity to elevate our liturgical music even more.  Jessica has made tremendous strides in our music program during her six years here at Christ the King, and I’m excited to see what lies ahead.  She’s also worked very hard to act on the feedback that you gave us in the parish survey, way back in 2017.  (Wow, has it really been that long?)  For instance, the two predominant areas for growth that were noted in that survey were (1) the desire for the music not to drag, and (2) the desire for hymns that were more familiar and easier to sing along with.  Those changes were put into place immediately, and parishioners have seemed to respond really well to them.  There are some other, longer-term projects that Jessica is working on as a result of the survey, including putting together a hymnal supplement to add some more favorite hymns to our repertoire, offering more […]

Our Parish Kickoff is coming soon!  In just two weeks (Saturday August 21st), we’ll have a terrific evening with the biggest parish event we’ve been able to hold since COVID hit.  It will be so good to come together as a parish family.  I’ve certainly missed that, and I know that many of you have expressed the same thing to me.

So why are we calling it a Parish Kickoff?  To me it seems appropriate to think of this moment in the life of our parish as a chance to “reboot”.  Prior to the shutdown, there were so many wonderful things going on in our parish, and based on our Parish Strategic Plan, we had many more great initiatives in the works.  COVID, of course, stopped many of these ministries and activities cold.  As we started to re-emerge, we were focused on the sacraments and the liturgy, which of course are the fundamental reason our parish community exists.  I am so grateful for the way our parish responded; it was very moving to see how much the sacraments meant to so many parishioners as we started to gather together again.  I’m also grateful to parishioners who found new and different ways for us to gather together, such as the outdoor Living Rosary and May Crowning.

However, it’s obvious that there are a lot of things about parish life that people missed dearly.  People definitely missed ministries they had performed, faith formation activities in which they had participated, and opportunities to connect with other parishioners.  That’s why I’m looking forward to this Parish Kickoff so much!  It will be a great social event, first of all, with kid-friendly activities, music, food trucks, a beer tent for adults, and […]

Some of you have been asking about the renovation of the exterior façade of the church.  When we conducted our capital campaign in 2018 (goodness, was it really that long ago?), one of the items on the campaign was this exterior renovation.  The last renovation was done in the 1990’s, and there’s a lot of visible staining, cracking and other damage to the surface.  Many people commented in the parish survey of 2017 that this was especially noticeable since so much has been done to beautify the interior of the church, and that the dramatic improvements from our interior renovation made an exterior renovation even more necessary.

We assembled a committee of parishioners (with a diversity of parish experience and professional expertise) to explore our options for this project.  The options ranged from simple repair of the damage all the way to a more comprehensive expansion that would give us a substantial gathering space in the vestibule, which is another need cited by many in the parish survey.  Our first meeting, however, was in January 2020.  (You can see where I’m going with this…)  When COVID closed everyone down in March 2020, the work of this committee was put on hold.

I’m pleased to say that this committee has resumed its work over the last couple of months, and our first official step has been to contract with an architect to come up with some preliminary designs of what our options might look like.  This will help us assess what will best meet our needs, as well as what we believe we can realistically and responsibly do with our parish resources.  (We have some donations that are specifically earmarked for this renovation, so part of the process […]

As we continue to emerge from the COVID pandemic, you’ll notice some other changes we’ve made recently:

Parish Emails.  Last week, you may have noticed that we’ve scaled back from our daily parish email and instead are sending a weekly email every Saturday.  The daily email seemed to be a very effective way to keep our parish connected when so many people were unable to make it to Mass.  With increased Mass attendance, though, it doesn’t seem like that need is quite as great, and we certainly don’t want to overload your inbox and become a nuisance.  We’ll keep up the weekly emails throughout the summer, and then at the end of the summer we’ll reevaluate based on the feedback we get from parishioners.

YouTube Channel.  For the time being, we’ll continue to live stream our daily and Sunday Masses.  The viewership of these Masses is much lower than it was at the peak of the pandemic, but right now it still seems to be important for our parishioners who are homebound or otherwise unable to attend Mass.  We’ll reevaluate this at the end of the summer, as well.

We will, however, continue to use our YouTube channel.  In addition to live streaming Masses, this has proved to be an effective way to involve more parishioners in different faith formation and prayer activities going on here at the church.  We hope this will be a good vehicle for parishioners to be able to participate in parish activities when they’re unable to be here in person.

Social Distancing.  You’ll also notice that last week we changed up the cords that we have used to block off pews.  Now we’re just keeping the cords on the side pews of the Joseph […]