News - July 2022

In this installment, we are sharing some history of our parish regarding registered households and sacramental celebrations as well as current totals and parish boundaries. It is especially interesting to see that 44% of registered parishioners live outside our parish boundaries which means our parish has become an intentional one more than a strictly territorial one for many.

This installment is a combination of data from the archdiocese along with some benchmarks to compare J&A against all other parishes who are part of the Disciple Maker Index (DMI) data set.

At present the Archdiocese of St. Louis has a limited number of priests to appropriately serve parish pastoral needs. Priests serving in parishes need to be realigned to better provide pastoral care. Take a look at the archdiocesan data as well as our parishioners responses to questions around inviting others to religious life.

This week’s installment is all about evangelization. During our three-night Pentecost mission, we heard from Fr. Patrick Baikaukas. He called us to be more creative evangelists. He shared that God didn’t intend for evangelization to be orderly especially when he is trying to break through to us. We are not teaching new things; we just need more personal effort and intentionality to take opportunities to share our faith with those we encounter. Sometimes we miss these opportunities to evangelize but we can always try again! We invite you to take some time to review these stats around missionary impulse and consider how you might make a personal effort to evangelize in your life.