Today's Parish | Ideas and Inspiration for Pastors, Parish Ministers, and Leaders

By Kay Stark

In our experience here, the three most important building blocks for nurturing a stewardship parish are spirituality, hospitality, and gratitude and generosity. Let me say a few words about each.

Spirituality
Today we have many and varied ministries of spiritual growth. We have retreats, missions, prayer groups, adult enrichment, Scripture studies, and promotion of Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, and small Christian communities. Many of our parishioners take advantage of daily Mass. We have an active initiation team as well as over three hundred parishioners who teach religious education and share their faith with our children each year.

Hospitality
We work hard at hospitality. We are frequently told that people choose to join our parish because they feel welcomed here. We have parish picnics, pasta dinners, fish frys, parish dances, pancake breakfasts, and welcome breakfasts. We have funeral luncheons, and wedding hostesses, and a ministry that focuses on our babies who are being baptized. We personally greet all new parishioners. Not only are these ministries done but they are done with great joy.

Gratitude leading to Mission
Gratitude and generosity are alive in this parish. We have many outreach programs, including a transitional housing group, an emergency outreach group, a Habitat for Humanity group, a crew that works at a homeless shelter each month, and a group that delivers food to the local food pantry.

Our parishioners donate food and money each week. In November we host a “Harvest Sunday” where we go out into the neighborhoods and collect food for the needy. We collect over 60,000 items to stock the local food pantry.

In December we have “Share Christmas” where our families will get the names of less fortunate families and provide Christmas gifts for them each year. We also provide clothing gifts for prisoners at Christmas time.

Many of our parishioners have adopted children and elderly from other countries and have sent money to them for many years. We tally our volunteers and the hours they give to our parish. Our most recent survey revealed that we have a total of 2095 volunteers who give 106,152 hours per year to our parish.

The amount of treasure our parishioners give to our parish continues to grow each year. We also put a basket in the back of church for any exceptional needs such as for victims of tornadoes or earthquakes. TP

*This article is excerpted from Today’s Parish magazine (September 2004).

Kay Stark

Stark is ministry coordinator at St. Elizabeth Seton Parish, Naperville, Illinois.