From Michael This past week I was on vacation, retreating to the Jersey Shore as is my custom, summer and winter. Another custom is the annual sandcastle construction I undertake with my nephew Jack. Jack is 10 and each year since he was a baby we have enjoyed building sandcastles together, but over time our […]
From Tom This summer, my wife and I are working on cleaning our attic. Over time it has become pretty cluttered and we both can’t take it anymore and are working to clean it up. We have started a few times on the project, but have failed. The problem has been a lack of focus […]
From Tom Below are a few quick unrelated thoughts on summer life at the Church. ● I have a bit of love/hate relationship with summer right now. I love summer and look forward to the chance to slow down, but that really hasn’t happened yet. Plus, it can be difficult when volunteers and staff are […]
This summer is a really interesting one for us, message wise. Currently we are offering a series called “What God Wants.” It is a message that we have given before, and we have been up front about that. It is also a video message: we film during the week and show the video after Masses […]
This past Sunday we published four of the seven “great practices” we had found in successful Churches. Below are the final three practices. Take a look. Practice Five: Not only are you only as good as your web site, you are your website. The Internet is the most important place and way your Church will […]
As we gathered together with Parish staff and leadership last week we spent some time looking at things we’ve learned from others, especially the very best practices of some of the most successful Churches in America. As an exercise, and for purposes of our current discussion, we identified 7…obviously there are many more, but 7 […]
Saturday our Parish Staff gathered together at Loyola College with about 40 leaders from our Church: members of the Parish Council, Financial Council, Cooperators and some of our ministry leaders. The group was truly outstanding in terms of talent and commitment. We meet to begin looking ahead. Why now? Well, this month we are finishing […]
I have a friend who is Pastor of a big Church. He says it “sleeps” 700. This is a sadly common description of many Catholic congregations: asleep. I know that description fit this Church was not so long ago. Churches that need waking up have prevailing cultures of detachment and shallow commitment which almost always […]
In this weekend’s message we reflected on John 6 where Jesus lays out some pretty heavy teaching and then watches as many of the people following him grumble and complain and eventually leave. They quit being his disciples. Guess what? It hurt, it felt bad, Jesus hurt and felt bad. Just like we do when […]
From Michael I think Friday is my most difficult day, because the message has to come together by the end of the day, no more excuses. Sunday, though a marathon for us, is actually easier than Saturdays for some reason I can’t quite describe. There is a lot of energy on Sundays so maybe that’s […]
