“Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord.”

            Paul asks the Christians at Corinth today to consider their own calling, where they’ve come from, and what God has done in their lives. We’ve done that over the past year with “Living Faithfully at Our Lady,” our strategic planning initiative. Through parish surveys, focus groups, and in-depth interviews, we’ve looked at what we have to boast about “in the Lord,” at the unique ways in which Christ is moving in our Lady’s parish.

            It was obvious that we deeply appreciate our culture of family life. Our Lady is a place where families with children feel welcomed and valued. We saw that our parish has a unique strength in being a parish to which young adults return or are drawn to raise their own families. Young couples see mature families they can look up to, and peers who are making similar decisions to raise Christ-centered, generous families.

            We’ve leaned into this strength by adding more opportunities for couples to witness to each other. After starting our recently married couples dinners last year, we added dinners for our engaged couples to get to know each other. We’re also striving to incorporate the importance of witness into everything we do, so we invited a recently married couple to share their own experience with our engaged couples, especially about the importance of chastity before marriage, learning Natural Family Planning and being open to life in marriage, and what it’s like to become parents at a young age.

            We’ve also incorporated witness and mentorship into our baptismal preparation. I realized that what most of our couples approaching baptism really needed was not so much a theology lesson from me as the witness of couples and families who could help them form strong prayer lives as a family, to be Christ-focused families living the call to be the domestic Church. This experience is also open to those who have gone through the theology class format baptismal preparation before, or any young family wanting to make Christ even more the center of their family’s life.

We saw that love for Christ in the Eucharist, and the reverent and devout celebration of the sacraments, is a hallmark of Our Lady. We’ve leaned into this love by starting the Templars for our high school young men who serve at the altar, fostering their love of Christ in the Eucharist and of the Holy Mass, meeting monthly to focus on growing in virtue together, serving the parish’s major feast day celebrations together, and fostering a culture of mentorship and witness for the younger gentlemen. We’ve seen more young men continue serving in high school, and even got back some who had been sitting out. They’ve also been serving outside Mass by helping elderly parishioners (and one very busy priest) with their Christmas decorations, and you’ll see them helping out with the soup suppers at our upcoming Lenten series on the Fridays of Lent.

      One year ago, when we asked for your commitment to sacrificial generosity towards our parish, I promised that if we committed to increasing that support, we would hire a talented Director of Sacred Music from the burgeoning national talent pool, with the goal of building up the best Sacred Music program of any Catholic parish in Northeast Indiana. It was a lofty goal and a big commitment, but you responded! We were blown away by the generous commitments so many parishioners made in support of this goal, and just as we were about to cut off applications, I got the resume I had been looking for the whole time – someone with talent, experience, formation, and maturity. Starting in August, we’ve seen a great increase in participation in Sacred Music from our parish, and the results have been very impressive.

      Along the way, we also saw the need for improved communication from the parish to parishioners. We just debuted a beautiful new website that is easy for us to update and provide accurate information. We’re also testing an improved system for sending parish-wide emails and texts to keep you up to date.

      What if we could do even more? We’re excited to share with you today our parish’s strategic plan that will guide our priorities for the next three years. This plan was put together with the help of Ad Lucem Group, a consultancy firm in South Bend, whose leaders have affiliations with the prestigious Medoza School of Business at Notre Dame. We formed a team of parishioners that was diverse in its age, gender, time at the parish, and included converts and cradle Catholics. This team conducted interviews with parishioners, reviewed the results of our surveys and focus groups, and worked with our staff to identify the pillars of our plan.

This plan has three pillars or focus areas, areas where we see strength in our parish, and where we’ve discerned God is calling us to grow. You have a copy of the plan in the bulletin you’ll take home today. There is also an extended version available at the church entrances that explains more of the values that informed the selection of our pillars and initiatives. There is also a page on our new website devoted to the strategic plan that will be continually updated as we refine the initiatives, decide on strategies and programs to implement them, and mark off our progress. So, make sure to check that out regularly!

The first pillar is Lifelong Conversion to Christ: Faith formation for all ages. Within this pillar, we see the most urgent priority being the evangelization and discipling of our youth through fostering a culture of mutual responsibility for the faith of our young people. We are investigating partnering with Fraternus and Fidelis, national Catholic apostolates that serve these goals in a way consonant with the culture of our parish.

We also will build on our love and reverence for the Eucharist with quarterly faith formation opportunities in this area. We’ll start with our parish Lenten series and Forty Hours in Lent this year, focused on encountering Christ more deeply in the Mass and Adoration.

The second pillar is Casting Nets for Christ. We know that God is calling us to do more to reach non-practicing Catholics, non-Catholics, and the unchurched. Our first initiative in this area will be to form a small group of faith mentors and evangelizers to spark grassroots evangelization and the multiplication of committed Catholic disciples. There are numerous national Catholic organizations that provide coaching and support for this kind of endeavor, and we’ll be researching who is the best partner for our parish.

We want everyone to have a chance to grow in their readiness to share their faith, so our second initiative in Casting Nets for Christ is to give everyone the chance to take part in events that provide greater formation in doing this, either as a single event or a short series.

Our third pillar is Encountering Christ in Community. There is a strong community here. One of our people discerning becoming Catholic this year told me that she’s been so impressed with the quality of community present in our parish – high praise from someone coming from the kind of small Protestant churches that normally way out-do Catholics in community. Our first initiative will be for everyone to have the chance to join a discipleship group, giving men the chance to experience Christ-centered fellowship with other men, women with other women, and couples with other couples. Second, we will form an apostolate to welcome new parishioners in a highly personable way, incorporating that priority of mentorship and witness. Third, we will host parish-wide and small-group social events at least quarterly and foster community outside Mass.

These are some big goals, and as many as they are, they represent a lot of whittling down of many different possibilities that we discussed. To make them possible, we will need your help! We are forming teams that will guide the implementation of each of our pillars. If there is one that particularly excites you, Ashley Esther, our director of special projects, is guiding the formation of those teams and would love to talk to you.

Last Sunday, we shared more details about our upcoming capital projects, especially the renovation of our parish hall this year. Hopefully it’s even more clear now what we plan to do with this improved space! Having a better space for parish social and formational events will be important for the success of our plan.

Successfully implementing this plan will also require financial commitment. This week, all our registered households will receive in the mail an invitation to make a commitment of sacrificial generosity towards our parish. Please take time this week to prayerfully discern how God is calling you to sacrificial generosity. Maybe you are currently giving sacrificially to Our Lady of Good Hope, and we are so grateful for that. But maybe there’s been a change to your financial situation, or maybe you hear God calling you to do even more! Maybe you currently give, or have in the past but stopped, and God is calling you to give truly sacrificially. Or maybe you haven’t yet been giving regularly because what you have to give seems so small because you’re young, because you’re just getting started in life, or because you’re still trying to make up your mind whether this is really going to be your spiritual home. This is your chance to get started, to thank the Lord for what He’s given you through your generosity to His Church. If all of us do what we can, great things will happen.

Or maybe this is your chance to commit to this parish, to say, “I want to be a part of the great things happening here.” We’d be thrilled for that commitment as well. After talking together as a family and praying about your gift, next Sunday will be our Commitment Sunday, when you’ll have the chance to turn in that commitment and celebrate the Lord’s generosity to us together. Thank you so much for your generosity and for your renewed commitment to Our Lady of Good Hope!

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

IV Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXVI