St. Mary of the Assumption Parish Council Meeting 1/12/2016
Members Present: Father Kunkel, Ken Kiedrowski, Jim Edwards, Eric Rhodes, Bill Bokel, Tim Mackey, Jeffrey Kline, Scott Friedman, Dan Melefsky, Mike Ziegler, John Smith
Staff Present: Barbara Sadler
Additional Parishioners Present: John McCarty, Roger Oursler
Meeting Began at: 7:03 pm
Opening Prayer: Jim Edwards
Pastor’s Report:
Deacon Phil’s son had a stroke. His name is David Seneschal and he is 36 years old. Please pray for him. David had an infection in his tooth that caused a blood clot to move to his brain.
Father does not have an exact number of surveys, but he thinks that we may have gotten about 300 surveys completed. Our parish should get some information/feedback in February. We will then be able to see what direction we should focus our attention on.
Pope Francis has expressed that Eucharistic Adoration and the sacrament of reconciliation be linked to the Year of Mercy. He asked that the church hold services for 24 hours for the Lord. This will happen in Harford County on Friday March 4th and Sat march 5th. This will be at the Holy Door Site – our site is at St Ignatius, Hickory at the historic church. This will begin at 3pm on Friday. The regional penance service will be held at 7pm at the large church at St Ignatius. Everyone is invited to attend.
Father is considering moving the Wednesday night confessions to Tuesday nights.
Father was very pleased with the Christmas celebrations. He is appreciative of all of the help with the decorations.
The 4pm Christmas mass was absolutely packed. There were people standing down the hallway and couldn’t hear the mass. Father would like to iron out some details to be able to run sound to those people in the future, perhaps speakers in the hallway. The 8pm mass was not very full. Father is considering combining the 6pm & 8pm masses, maybe changing to 7pm service to replace those two. He will discuss this with the Liturgy committee.
Father Kunkel has decided that we will continue ringing the bells during mass.
Youth Ministry Report:
Jim reported for Janet (who is with the RCIA class tonight). There will be 6 baptisms at the Easter Vigil this year and 1 confirmation. There are 4 teens and 2 adults.
Communications Report:
John has been working on our website. We currently have about 35 pages.
John said that there are some issues with the format that we currently have been using. It is not easy to fit all of the information that we need and we often have to reformat pages to make it work.
He has been studying St Ignatius’s website and thinks that may work better for us. They currently use the eCatholic website. John would recommend that if we use this company, we choose a 50-page website. This would cost $420 (We currently pay $360/year to our current company, but that company has been sold and we are not sure if they will continue to honor that same low rate).
John said that the number of users have decreased for our app. We have gone from 137 users, down to 97 users. He is not sure if this reflects active users or if people have deleted the app. We have had great feedback from the people who use this app.
Other Business:
Jim discussed the Bring A Friend to Church concept. Jim spoke with Ellen Dumer about this concept. They are going to comprise a team of people to work on this. They are thinking that MAY would be a good time for this event.
Jim said that Ellen is working on creating an Evangelization Team to focus on outreach activities.
She is also creating a group called ‘Called & Gifted.’ This group is intended to be different for those who have worked together in the ChristLife program.
John said that he was talking to Jack about our road sign. He would like to look into how much it would cost to redo the sign, to include lighting and messages that can be changed. They are thinking about approaching the knights to see if they would help with the cost. Barbara said that the county has regulations that may not allow us to change the sign on the road. We would need to look into the regulations. John will investigate to see what we are able to do.
March for Life will be Jan 22nd. There is a group from our parish who are planning to go.
The Man Hour ministry is still meeting at 6am on Saturdays. They meet at the church and on some Saturdays meet at a restaurant for breakfast.
Closing Prayer: Father Kunkel
Meeting Ended: 8:03 pm