PASTORAL PLAN OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI PARISH
The Pastoral Plan shown below is the 1999 Pastoral Plan.
Click here for a rough draft of the new plan being formulated in 2003.
Introduction

In the fall of 1997 we began a strategic planning process for St. Francis of Assisi parish to seek direction for the years marking the turn of the century and the beginning of the new millennium. Through surveys, listening sessions, and interviews, the people of the parish were surveyed. We engaged in further consultation through meetings of parish groups and ministries. Members of the Pastoral Council studied other successful large parishes and congregations. An Opportunity Audit was developed and all in the parish were asked for their input. The Pastoral Council has done its best to listen to the needs and interests of the parishioners and integrate this input into this strategic plan. All of the listening in the world – all possible planning is in need of God’s blessing and grace if there is to be spiritual and ministerial fruit. So we begin this segment of our parish journey with heartfelt reliance on God and also praise and thanks for God’s love and care. It seems our research and planning has led us to the same ingredients of a plan for church that we can find in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. God seems to be calling St. Francis to be a Pentecost-like church under the sway of the Holy Spirit, enlivened by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, characterized by small groups or communities, filled with a spirit of evangelization and a concern for conversion, and alive with a contagious, missionary passion that reaches out more and more to those separated or alienated from us, or those unchurched.

ST. FRANCIS’ VISION

St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church strives to be a Christ-centered expression of the family of God, nourished by Spirit-filled worship and ministries that impact, challenge, and empower people of all ages to serve one another in a spirit of community, stewardship, and outreach. Jesus Christ, companion, Lord, and Savior is the life giving center of this community. The Eucharist is our font of nourishment, where with Jesus, we offer the Father praise and worship. We experience Christ’s love and presence also in our many groups and ministries, in which we feed and nurture each other and the world around us. We are a community of stewardship, sharing our time, treasure and giftedness with each other and the world. We believe that through our common Baptism, each of us is blessed with gifts of the Spirit to be used for the common good and the Glory of God. We are a welcoming, evangelizing community, striving to be accepting and inclusive of all people. We are a community of outreach, ministering to the victims of society’s sin and injustice with the resources God has blessed us. St. Francis is a community committed to responding to the mandate of Jesus in John’s Gospel: "Love one another as I have loved you."

OUR HEART VALUES

  1. Evangelization of the world around us toward conversion and life in God’s Reign
  2. The Priesthood of the Faithful flowing from baptism, training, and formation for ministry
  3. Inner healing through Christ and spirituality
  4. Small Groups and Basic Christian Communities as paradigmatic for our parish life
  5. The Domestic Church of Home as the basic cell of Church
  6. Responsibility of all for social justice
  7. Communication of Jesus Christ and our faith community to the world around us
  8. Stewardship of time, treasure, and gifts of the Holy Spirit
  9. A Church for all ages, with special focus on children, teens, and young adults
 Ministerial Focus One:   Evangelization, Catechesis, and Adult Formation

St. Francis will increase and deepen its efforts at evangelization, catechesis, and adult formation, awakening and deepening people’s faith in Jesus Christ, inviting and enabling them to responsible membership in the Body of Christ, the Church. To achieve this, St. Francis will:

    2. Continue to foster and advance "community" as a pastoral direction for the parish by: a. The Pastoral Council will research the needed small support groups and call for the formation of these groups
    1. All groups would have as components: prayer, reflection, and outreach
    2. Call for existing groups to incorporate prayer, reflection, and outreach
    b. Establish ways to improve the welcoming and inclusion process into the parish; this process would include attention to those entering the parish through the baptismal preparation, marriage preparation, and RCIA programs

    c. Research the needs of persons with disabilities and do what is necessary to meet those needs

     3. Continue to develop forms of adult formation and education by: a. Develop a comprehensive series of classes to help people understand Catholic teachings

    b. Develop parish weekend retreats (and mini-retreats) to help adults have a closer relationship with God and the church (conversion and ongoing conversion)

    c. Encourage a wide variety of prayer forms and spiritual life

    d. Research and develop improved baptismal and marriage preparation programs

     4. Continue to develop our religious education programs by: a. Commission the Religious Education Committee to develop a family focus for youth religious education (including school families)

    b. Deepen and develop the training and formation of all who come forward to serve as catechists and other ministers of religious education

    c. Research and improve where necessary formation ministries to the pre-school children and their parents

    d. Research and implement better sacramental preparation programs and use these programs as special opportunities to evangelize individuals, couples and families (1st Penance, 1st Eucharist, and Confirmation)

    e. Develop a comprehensive plan to encourage vocations to priesthood, religious life and profession lay ministry

     5. Continue to develop our youth ministry by: a. Commission our Youth Minister and Youth Ministry Committee to develop a strategic plan for youth ministry that spans the middle school years through high school

    This plan should include but not be limited to the following:

  1. social service and social justice opportunities
  2. mentors for our middle school and high school youth
  3. a chatroom on the internet for teens
  4. better and more innovative ways to communicate Catholic teachings to our youth
  5. Retreats or other formats that would help teens develop a closer relationship with God
    6.      6. Continue to develop our young adult ministry by: a. Develop and implement a strategic plan for young adult ministry involving the young adults in the formation of this plan

    b. Develop ways to become more pro-active in evangelizing young adult seekers

    c. Develop a chatroom on the internet for college students and young adults

     7. Develop better outreach to marginally and non-practicing Catholics and the greater community
Ministerial Focus Two:   Worship

St. Francis will become a more prayerful, participative, worshipping community. To achieve this, St. Francis will:

1. Heighten the community sense of its own role in liturgical celebration through increasing participation, deepening formation and content. Participation will be increased by: a. Developing youth altar servers

b. Encourage whole families to serve mass, present gifts, read, assist, etc.

c. Further develop the use of greeters and ushers to more effectively welcome people

  • Station at all doors to give a hearty welcome, hand out prayer booklets, etc.
  • Ushers and greeters will be encouraged to call people by name
  • Name tags for guests, RCIA people so they can be greeted by parishioners
    •  d. Further develop the ritual prayer of Baptism, Holy Communion, Confirmation, weddings, and funerals as opportunities for evangelization and conversion

    e. Continue to develop liturgical music ministries to further enhance participation in the music at worship

     2. Formation and content will be deepened by: a. Calling forth and training more parishioners in liturgical ministries and deepening the training in each ministry

    b. Periodically offering a liturgical conference to contribute toward excellence in liturgy

    c. Working with evangelization and catechesis ministers to develop liturgical catechesis

  • Offer educational programs on the mass (also use liturgy to educate)
    •  d. After weekday and weekend liturgies, have an opportunity to further explore the scripture readings
  • Meditation and questions on the Sunday readings for family discussion included in the Forum
    •      3. Individuals and families will be encouraged and helped to learn how to pray together     4. Develop the physical aspects of St. Francis church so that it best facilitates worship: i.e., baptismal font, gathering area, Eucharistic chapel, disabled needs

    Ministerial Focus Three:  Pastoral Care

    St. Francis will deepen its efforts and commitment to pastoral care by nurturing physical, spiritual, and emotional inner healing through Christ our Lord. To achieve this, St. Francis will:

    1. Continue to expand ministries to the hospitalized, especially those in nursing homes and those shut-in at home by: a. Educating parishioners regarding the efforts of this mission by public relations via The Forum, speakers at masses, etc., so as to encourage other parishioners to volunteer

    b. Training new volunteers as appropriate for these duties

    c. Identifying those people within the parish with special needs for this ministry via surveys and other outreach efforts

    d. Study the existing structure of this ministry to see if it can handle larger volume; if not, then restructure as necessary. An important part of any restructuring effort would be to equitably distribute management tasks among those responsible

    e. Given expected increase in the elderly population of the parish, plan for expansion yearly as needed by increasing number of volunteers as well as the number of those in leadership positions

    f. Investigate hiring one staff member to coordinate efforts and recruit volunteers

     2. Continue to foster and advance emotional support for our parishioners. This would include development of ministries to help those in various stages of grief and bereavement, ministries to the emotionally suffering (i.e., those suffering from various syndromes of anxiety, divorce, abortion, or depression, and their families and loved ones) and ministries for those who have lost jobs. These goals would be accomplished by: a. Identifying current needs of parishioners via survey, outreach, tools, etc.

    b. Assessing the capacity of existing programs (i.e., for our volunteer counselors)

    c. Expanding existing programs as needed by:

  • increasing number of volunteers if possible
  • utilizing resources of Catholic Social Services
  • consideration of forming St. Francis chapters within larger organizations
  • expanding to involve other parishes or incorporate with other local parish or Christian groups
    •  d. Establish an Emergency Hotline/Network or further promote the use of existing program

    e. Investigate the hiring of a staff member to coordinate these efforts (perhaps the same person alluded to above in first goal if demand for these services is high), or could be an additional duty for a present staff person if demand for these services is low

     3. Work with the Parish Health Ministry in developing various efforts at proactive, pyscho-spiritual education by: a. Expanding the existing program by increasing parish awareness of their mission

    b. Recruit new volunteers with health care knowledge and experience

    c. Develop support/education/spiritual counseling in a disease-specific manner

     4. Call forth parishioners to develop new ministries and self-help groups that foster a synthesis of Christian spirituality by: a. Provide a standard mechanism for initiating new ministries/groups

    b. Network with other parishes as necessary to optimize benefit if a desired group cannot find adequate participation to become viable within St. Francis

     5. Continue to identify areas of need in pastoral care by: a. Conducting listening sessions to identify areas of need in pastoral care

    b. Survey inactive members of the parish

    c. Develop retreat models around pastoral care issues

         Ministerial Focus Four:  Family Life

    St. Francis parish is committed to supporting, educating, and spiritually enriching all families of our parish.

    1. The Pastoral Committee will engage in proactive efforts at listening to the needs of all families. We want to better articulate the spirituality of marriage and the sacredness of family through activities such as specific masses that speak to family issues. These masses might include children for readings, altar assistants, etc. a. Identify individual or group to coordinate all family-related activities and issues

    b. Identify individual or group to establish and expand the role of families and children at our masses

    1. consider family masses
    2. consider youth liturgical ministers
    3. consider more family- or marriage-oriented homilies
     2. We will create/expand the use of our web page for exchange of family info regarding St. Francis and the Catholic community. We will promote Catholic/Christian radio, publications a. The web page should include
    1. basic family info on St. Francis
    2. lists of all the various groups and organizations and links to their pages
    3. links to outside web pages of interest as appropriate
    4. search capabilities to allow someone to find the right group or help they are looking for
    b. While promoting Catholic radio and publications, we should continue to make good use of local broadcast and print media to promote St. Francis and events occurring in our parish and school     3. We will evaluate possible ways of dealing with small children at church. a. This could include:
    1. expanding the nursery through the existing organization, possibly by using another or an additional site
    2. creating a cry room
    3. creating a "family section" in the church.
     4. We will support and address the needs of parenting, married life, and troubled marriages a) To do this, we will:
    1. promote seminars with appropriate speakers
    2. support involvement in retreats sponsored by St. Francis and other Catholic organizations
    3. evaluate contracting a marriage counselor to be available to parishioners
     5. We will create a divorced/separated group

    6. We will coordinate the above family activities with youth and singles ministries

    7. We will continue to support the efforts of the Catholic Church to foster vocations to the priestly, religious, and lay ministries

    8. We are proud of our cultural diversity and will encourage involvement of ethnic and racial groups within the parish

     Ministerial Focus Five:  Parish Social Ministry

    St. Francis will increase and deepen its efforts to incarnate the gospel message of Jesus Christ and Catholic Social Teaching. To achieve this, St. Francis will:

    1. Monitor Parish Social Ministry effectiveness and build the PSM infrastructure. Work to increase the level of involvement by parishioners and insure that the Parish Social Ministry continually evaluates its own performance to work more effectively. Insure that parish volunteers feel adequately trained and not overly-burdened by their tasks.

    2. Increase the level of support (both monetary and voluntary) provided by the parish to help those less fortunate than ourselves by:

    a. Mentoring a poor family to get them off welfare

    b. Build one house per year for Habitat for Humanity on our own upon reassessment of the program

    c. Encourage parishioners to increase funding to and volunteer for local agencies which assist the poor

    d. Establish and support a parish prison ministry including mentoring a released prisoner

     3. Mobilize parishioners and parish resources to assist people who, while not poor, still need help they cannot find elsewhere by: a. Coordinate housing for ten families of long-term patients at local hospitals per year

    b. Continue to build pro-life support within the parish

    c. Establish a parish AIDS ministry

    d. Develop ministries for senior citizens such as supply volunteer drivers for transportation to and from Sunday mass

    e. Establish a Befriender’s ministry

    f. Continue our support of Safehouse

     4. Advocating for peace and justice by: a. Develop a solidarity task force to follow global social issues

    b. Create an opportunity for a 10-14 day immersion in Latin America and bring people from Latin America to St. Francis

    c. Monitor and acting on legislative issues via Advocates for Justice or other agency as appropriate including but not restricted to:

    1. Assisted suicide
    2. Capital punishment
    3. Welfare changes
    4. Legislation that affects the dignity of human life
    d. Establish an advocacy program for the poor

    e. Adopt a parish in Central America

    f. Develop programs to alleviate racism

    g. Develop programs to address environmental justice

    h. Provide volunteers for marriage preparation classes

    i. Provide volunteers for Peace and Justice ministries such as:

    1. Crop Walk
    2. Archbishop Romero Sunday
    3. Peace Sunday
         Ministerial Focus Six:  Administration and Operations 1. We will review and improve our communications in the parish by: a. Review our current communications methods
    1. Survey Canticle readers
    2. Spice up Canticle with more graphics and simple messages
    3. Schedule each ministry to contribute a brief, energetic article to the Canticle and publish goals, current efforts, and goals
    b. Create a structured public relations effort
    1. investigate hiring a part-time person for public relations
    2. Create a talent bank database of parishioners willing to provide services to church (voluntary or discounted)
    3. Create a coordinator to access and maintain the volunteer parish talent bank
    c. Mass communication efforts l) Develop a better relationship with the local media a) better utilize the religion page in the papers with regular press releases

    b) goal: to be in the papers six times annually

         2) Develop video services a) develop parish production crew to tape special events and lectures

    b) utilize cable access for church activities and programs

    c) Survey homebound for interest in videotapes of St. Francis masses

    d) place monitors in nursery, choir room, and PAC to play live mass and other church events

         d. Develop better welcoming process for new members
    1. Welcome luncheons four times a year with ministries represented
    2. Creation of a better welcoming process for the newly initiated and baptized
    e. Communication to inactive parishioners
    1. Continue to send Canticle
    2. Give personal invitations to appropriate events
    f. Develop a database to benefit public relations and member services
    1. Modify current website to accommodate registration for parish programs (i.e., classes, organizations, religious education classes, school events)
    2. Develop parishioner’s church directly for parish services possibly including parishioner’s info, e-mail, chatroom, and website addresses
    3. Develop chatrooms with other parishes
    4. List chatrooms on our website
    5. Designate responsibility to monitor chatrooms and install software to screen language
    6. Develop a unified database plan so we have one source for parishioner information
    g. Develop more social efforts to build community
    1. Identify constituent groups within the parish and gear social events toward them
    2. Develop more parish-wide events
    h. Create a more welcoming and information friendly entrance to church
    1. Have information board with cards for each ministry
    2. Have a suggestion/comment box
    3. Place new parishioner procedures and information in entrance
     2. We will examine and where necessary, improve our parish physical plant a. Evaluate room usage to investigate issues to build more meeting space

    b. Develop more parking

    c. Evaluate all buildings for handicap accessibility and signage

         Ministerial Focus Seven:  Stewardship

    St. Francis will challenge our parish community toward a better understanding of the Gospel message of Stewardship as a way of life. To attain this, St. Francis will:

    1. Enhance and refine our efforts in educating parishioners on the fundamental importance of stewardship to our faith. Specifically, our responsibility is to consciously share God’s gifts of: Time, Talent, and Treasure with others as Jesus taught us to do. We will research more ways of communicating this message beyond the use of homilies and parish publications

    2. We will foster Time, Talent, and Treasure as an ever-present component of community life

    a. We will clarify the various ways parishioners may invest in the success of their parish by sharing their gifts l) We will continue to introduce these ways through Stewardship Sunday, Forum and Canticle articles and, where possible, with personal invitations to participate

    2) We will build and maintain a database of all parishioners in order to record individual interests, occupations, and activities to enhance the stewardship success

    3) We will investigate other stewardship publications to complement existing publications and enhance overall importance to the parish

         b. We will be better stewards in employing Time, Talent, and Treasure offered by parishioners for parish use. We will investigate new methods of linking parishioners with needs     3. We will develop and maintain a Strategic plan for the Stewardship Campaign a. We will research and implement additional ways for educating and increasing parishioner participation in stewardship efforts

    b. We will establish a parish-wide needs assessment strategy including, but not limited to, ministries, facilities, and school

     4. We will deepen our show of gratitude toward those who choose to share God’s gifts thereby encouraging and nurturing continued stewardship. We will do this by: Stewardship Sunday testimonials, personal, and parish thank-you notes, and other recognition, Forum and Canticle articles     Ministerial Focus Eight:  Elementary and Middle School

    St. Francis Catholic School is committed to maintaining and improving a multifaceted education that instills a respect for Christian values, a lifelong love of learning, a strong sense of self worth, and an active social conscience. In order to live the message, we teach and model these beliefs to our students and each other:

    1. We will embrace Catholic faith teachings as the focus and the foundation of our entire education effort, including: a. Affirming our commitment to Catholic social teaching

    b. Encouraging students, parents, and school staff to actively participate in parish and school activities and the many opportunities for faith development

    c. Supporting the school administration and staff in their efforts to provide an excellent religious and academic base for the students

    d. Increasing the number of opportunities for student and parent participation in service projects

     2. We will improve the educational process by: a. Maintaining a commitment to providing our students with high quality of education

    b. Structuring our curriculum to lay the foundation for high standards of scholastic achievement (including mathematics, science, social students, and language arts) in high school and beyond

    c. Providing a wide variety of instructional materials, equipment and community resources to support the curriculum and program goals of the school

    d. Structuring our curriculum so that all students leave St. Francis School with grade-appropriate academic and social skills

     3. We will uphold the efforts of our councils and committees by: a. Supporting the work of the School Committee as specific goals for the school are established each year

    b. Tracking the recommendations of the school’s 1999 accreditation study and helping with the completion of these goals

    c. Following the needs of the school established by the Technology Committee and supporting the growth of computer and multi-media education with the school

    d. Encouraging parents to be active in the education of their children by providing multiple opportunities for participation

    e. Supporting the work of the school and parish finance committees to balance the needs of the school within the parish budget while keeping tuition affordable

    f. Assessing the physical facilities so that improvements can be made to ensure quality education and environment

    g. Supporting the efforts of the parish/school development office so that the financial development of the school can be achieved

    h. Developing strategies to encourage the growth of the Endowment Fund to secure the financial future of the school

    i. Attracting and retaining staff members that are committed to implementing the spiritual and educational objectives of the school

    j. Encouraging the school finance committee to provide an adequate beginning salary to attract quality new teachers to the school and to retain present staff

    k. Providing our educators with a competitive compensation package

    l. Exploring ways with school administration to help provide supplemental training opportunities for staff that promote quality education outcomes and a focus on our faith

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