Good Shepherd Parish Mission Planning

The Parish Mission Planning Team has completed a mission plan for Good Shepherd Parish. The team first met on October 24th, 2019.  The task of the team was to plan how our Parish ministry efforts along with its Religious Education program and Catholic School could better impact all people in our community leading them to the Kingdom of God. The Team worked to align our Parish spiritual goals with Diocesan goals.

The Parish Mission Planning process was designed to help focus our local efforts on engaging the parish in evangelization and discipleship to reach out into our community.  Bishop Ricken asked us to implore the Holy Spirit to strengthen our minds and hearts to focus on the spiritual needs of our greater parish community.  The committee was asked to identify three to five goals that would best serve our local Parish community.

The Mission Planning team included Fr. Jon as our Pastoral Leader and LouAnn Buhl as Team Facilitator. Other members included: Carrie Aimers, Vicki Bergeron, Sandy Buhl, Tom Cullen, Leon Geiser, Laurie Pichee (Communication Rep), Mike Pichee (Tech Rep), Liz Rollmann (School Principal), Amanda Schaefer, Deb Steiner, and David Weber.  Todd Blahnik, the Superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Green Bay Diocese assisted the committee in its efforts.

The PMP team met regularly from October through March.  Prioritizing information from a parish leadership survey, from an operational and ministry checklist, from parish and community data, and from the school and parish planning recommendations, the Team wrote and finalized three goals with an action plan.

Due to the COVID pandemic, the timeline set by the Team to begin implementing the plan has been delayed. In the meantime, their work has been presented to the Parish Council, the Finance Council, the Board of Education, the Worship & Spiritual Life Committee, and at the Annual Parish meeting.

Through prayer, study, and much discussion, the committee has chosen 3 goals and set up a series of action steps to achieve the goals. They are briefly stated below.

Goal: To engage and educate parishioners.

  1. Form a Communications Team.
  2. Start a series of “Why we do what we do” mini lessons at Mass.
  3. Create a box at all church entrances so that parishioners can submit questions about the Mass.
  4. To investigate the feasibility of a full-time parish RE/Education Coordinator for Youth and Adults.
  5. To investigate Flocknote as a tool to increase parish communications.

Goal: To form an Evangelization Team reaching out to three groups: Inactive members, Hispanics, the Community at large.

  1. Form an Evangelization Team.
  2. Focus on inactive members.
  3. Focus on the Hispanic Community.
  4. Focus on the community at large.

Goal: To create awareness of our Stewardship needs so that 20% of parishioners commit to serving the parish in at least one way.

  1. Form a Stewardship Team.
  2. Assess the Parish level of stewardship.
  3. Define and list stewardship opportunities and communicate with parishioners using various mediums.
  4. Have a ministry weekend.

All of these goals are within our reach. We ask that you prayerfully consider how you can best help our Parish to advance in these goals and guide more people to the Kingdom of God.

 

Thank you for your prayers and support in this process. May God continue to bless us as we move forward,

Fr. Jon

Parish Mission Planning Team