I am very pleased to share with you our progress on the first phase of our Holy Spirit Parish Renewal Initiative – our Communal Discernment. I am sincerely and deeply grateful for the many of you who participated in the ​​discernment ​sessions, recognizing that some who may have wished to participate were not able to do so.  We received several hundreds of comments and suggestions, which provided us with a sense of the parish community’s vision for our future.

The feedback we received is very important and we are assessing it with utmost care to ensure we are drawing incisive conclusions, to be followed by deeply thought-out recommendations. Meanwhile, we are being very careful not to sacrifice important insights and deeper conclusions for the sake of speed – we are being very deliberate.

Thank you for your participation and your honesty.  Know that your thoughts and reflections are being taken seriously while maintaining confidentiality.

I thought you would like to see the framework that is helping us with our assessment.

What the pie chart shows is the percent of comments that fell into the four listed categories, whether those comments indicated our strengths or areas that need to be improved.

As you can see, over half of all comments were in the category of “Community.”  Perhaps this isn’t surprising given that Community is what so many of us craved during the worst times of the pandemic. In this category, many have shared their hope to see us continue our outreach programs and our ability to gather and build a stronger community.

Also not surprising is that “Liturgy” also garnered many comments – it’s at the center of our spiritual lives and I’m glad you sense it as such.  You can see that “Faith Formation” and “Ministries” are the remaining two categories.

The Pastoral Council will continue with their assessment for the next few months. I plan to provide you with an update in late February or early March.

Thank you again for your participation in the Parish Renewal Initiative.  Remember, we are now in the second phase of the initiative, which is prayerful self-reflection and personal discernment.