Happy New Year! I hope that you and your loved ones are enjoying the return to normalcy after refreshing & joy-filled holiday celebrations. Though I delight in the celebrations of the Incarnation, Mary, Mother of God, and the Epiphany, I am glad to be back in Ordinary Time. With the later start of Lent this year (March 5), we get a whole two months before entering into a(nother!) high holy season.

Our parish family life is also entering a new season. After six months of discussion & discernment, the new long-term schedule for all of our churches went into effect this month. Accompanying that is a new and simplified rotation of the priests among the regions, allowing each of us to spend at least three weekends each month within our ministerial region. Though all of us (clergy and laity alike!) are still adapting, I am hopeful that we are entering a period of stability. The key will be to use this time well!

Where 2024 was focused on launching Partners in the Gospel, 2025 is about foundations: building new ones and shoring up those that already exist. To that end, I propose two primary areas of focus – (re)building parish ministry & leadership and exploring how we become one canonical parish.

To my mind, the basics of parish life revolve around catechesis, sacramental celebrations, and leadership. In each area, we could simply default to a very simple – if barebones – arrangement centered around priests shouldering all of these….but that is surely not something we truly want!

Take catechesis: one one hand, it is possible to reserve catechesis to the clergy. Especially if we didn’t do anything else (ever!), we could just spend each night on a different sacramental preparation program, teaching First Holy Communion, Confirmation, and RCIA classes all by ourselves. Sure, we’d be exhausted and out of gas well before the end of the week – and feeling that every week! – but it’s technically an option. But what a loss it would be to exclude the great variety of perspectives and backgrounds from among our parishioners, with so many Catholics ready to share their faith journey and help people young & old explore the history and teachings of our faith.

Similarly, a priest can technically offer Mass (and the other sacraments) without any assistance, but what sad celebrations we’d have going without choirs & cantors, lectors, extraordinary ministers, altar servers, ushers, and sacristans. What richness we lose without the contribution many hands & voices lifting up our prayer to the Lord – not only on Sundays but at daily Masses, weekday gatherings for devotionals, adoration, and group prayer! And how our homebound parishioners need to experience not just the care of their priests but the fellowship of parishioners coming to them, bringing the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and in their very person.

Finally, it is true that a priest – especially the pastor – has unique authority in the life of a parish. Indeed, canon law outlines both the responsibility and authority that is specific to the parish priest. Of special interest, at least to me (!), is canon 532, which effectively says that the pastor acts in the name of the parish! But you know what else canon law says? That a pastor is to have a pastoral council (CIC 536 §1) and a finance council (CIC 537). He is to strive to know the faithful under his care (CIC 529 §1). If we priests fail to share the load, not only will we be crushed by its weight but we will never actually be able to fulfill the fullness of the responsibilities the law itself outlines (CIC 519-538). 

Did you catch the theme behind each of these areas? They match up to not just to the ordained priesthood, but to the priesthood of the baptized and its threefold ministry of preaching, sanctifying, and governing. Sure, we priests have a special way in which we live out these ministries – but these responsibilities are shared by and spread out among all the baptized. We are co-responsible for the mission of the Church!

With that in mind, my major focus in parish ministries & leadership is sustaining those leaders we have, finding new leaders to join them, and – where leadership doesn’t yet exist – creating space for new leaders. And make no mistake, ALL of our communities are in serious need.

Perhaps the most crucial need in each of our regions are our consultative bodies: the pastoral and finance councils. In the west region (Saint Anne parish & Saint Thomas the Apostle mission), we have had a group of dedicated parishioners – each of them themselves running at least one whole ministry (!) – coming together as an unofficial (but no less effective) body to make sure that things got done. At the end of last year, I shared with them that we would be dissolving that group in order to form proper councils. This month I am working to identify and invite parishioners to be part of these new councils – with the assistance and guidance of the former group, I hasten to add! I am seeking to have representation from the parish (Saint Anne), the mission (Saint Thomas the Apostle), and from among both the English and Spanish-speaking communities.

In the central region (Queen of Angels & Saint Joseph parishes), we are blessed with a parish & finance councils at both locations along with a school commission. But membership is thin on several fronts, with one of our councils having just a few members. The other councils and commission, though fairly well-staffed, struggle with the reality that many (most!) of their members have served well past the three year term limit outlined in archdiocesan policy (see Many Gifts, One Spirit: Consultative Leadership, CL 9).

In the east region (Saint Mary Star of the Sea), we have both a parish and finance council, but similarly struggle with numbers. This is especially felt in the course of our work to push through the major roof work (replacing the roof AND the rotted beams) needing done as soon as possible.

At every one of our churches, we are in need of liturgical and catechetical help. One parish has no ushers while another has many ushers but no lead usher to coordinate them. Faith formation programs are running (praise God!) but are held together by the consistent effort of a few….or even just one person. There are Masses where we have no choir, no altar servers, no lectors, or even no sacristan…..happily, never all three at once, but very often missing at least one whole ministry. In many, many cases, ministries rely on one person and God forbid they get sick or need to be absent!

At first blush – particularly considered as a whole – this might seem rather bleak or overwhelming, but these are actually easy problems to solve! Perhaps the greatest truth needing proclaimed is this: it doesn’t take a super-Catholic to be a volunteer, a catechist, or some other kind of leader. Ask anyone who volunteers at a parish and they’ll tell a similar story: they didn’t start because they were experts but rather because someone asked and they let their answer be ‘yes’.

Our parishes need your ‘yes’! It doesn’t have to be an offering of major or long-term commitment – in fact, if every parishioner sought to volunteer even one hour a month (pssst: volunteering at the Mass you already go to counts!), we’d be up to our ears in extra hours to fill! Many hands really do make light work….and a fun time of it, to boot.

In one of my prior parishes (in a galaxy far, far away in the land before time….), we convinced a key leader to get up and give a talk on this very thing. At the time she was a pastoral council member, liturgical leader, and had started a peer group from scratch – all areas she had (by then) been part of for a couple of years. But in her talk to the parish, she was brutally – but delightfully – frank: “I didn’t get involved in the parish because I wanted to make it better…..I got involved because I wanted friends and hoped to have someone to hang out with!” I won’t embarrass her by giving details that might identify her (I’m told she visits this site from time to time), but it was generally agreed by many (many!) parishioners that her efforts made a huge difference in the life of the community.

And that’s really the point I’m trying to highlight: that it is ordinary people looking to make ordinary connections that will result in extraordinary graces for our parish family!

If you read through the official Partners in the Gospel materials – especially the parish resources page – you’re likely to come away wondering where in the world we’re heading. The handbooks alone amount to a dense 117 pages of reading, covering pre-launch preparations, school considerations, phase one (2024-2025) parish work, and people-oriented efforts. The various areas of focus are many and varied – and it would be easy to get lost in the details

For our purposes, we need look no further than the label on the tin: becoming one canonical parish. This need not be complicated – after all, our five churches have been physically close for many, many years. What we’ve perhaps lacked – at least on the scale of the entire Olympic Peninsula – is consciously and deliberately growing as a neighbors. And if there’s one lesson that I remember from Mister Rogers (yes, I’m still a fan – may he rest in peace), growing together is as simple as asking ‘won’t you be my neighbor?’

What would it look like if we were one canonical parish? We can rest assured that some distinctiveness will always be necessary; our vast geographic area means that closing or even merging everything into one physical church is decidedly not where God is calling us! In a way that I find kind of neat, our parish family will have to resemble the Trinity – three distinct persons (if you will) while intimately united as one.

But what does that actually look like? I’m not sure how it all plays out, but I’m convinced that it will involve us more consciously aligning ourselves in common prayer, practices, and events. Even with multiple sites, how might our liturgical celebrations more closely observe what the Church envisions while also exploring (and learning from) our individual characteristics? This weekend’s celebration of Santo Niño at Saint Mary Star of the Sea is a good example of something both ancient and new that might enrich the other four churches. What might our Spanish speaking communities (Hispanic and Guatemalan) bring into the larger life of our parish family? And where (oh where!) could we look to establish things like the Italian dinners and Hawaiian luaus that some of remember from parishes elsewhere (it can’t just be me who wants this, right?!?).

Over the last many months, I’ve been talking with our faith formation staff about coordinating our various faith formation programs jointly or in parallel. In a couple of cases, it is quite possible – indeed likely! – that we would merge programs (the central region, I mean), building on the strengths of each and offsetting difficulties when separate. In other cases, having the distinct programs collaborate so that they share similar timelines, subjects, and goals despite being on opposite ends of the parish family.

And that’s just current aspects of parish life, ministry, and catechesis. What new things could we do – things that we’ve never done before – that could help us come together as a parish family, occasionally or regularly.

Someone asked me what dreams I might have and I must admit that I have one similar to the parishioner I mentioned above. Without a doubt, it is foremost a personal desire: I want a Catholic comic-con here on the Olympic Peninsula! A few years ago, I was blessed to be part of Doxacon Seattle – a small ecumenical group that puts on an annual one-day Christian comic convention in Woodinville. They invite speakers to talk about the intersection of faith and fandom, with a different theme each year (I got to give a couple of them over the years). There were also board game break out sessions, time for food & fellowship, even a few vendors! And of course, we prayed together and talked Christianity throughout. What if we did something similar – but leveraging the faithful geekiness of our combined five churches?

I’m not gonna lie – I am highly motivated to make this a reality. Is it a pastor or parish priority? Definitely not. Is it a personal priority? Yes. Yes it is. But surely I’m not alone in having wild and awesome dreams for what could be!

While there is plenty of work ahead of us, I’m excited to see what comes next. I’m proud of what we have already accomplished since it was first announced (this time last year!) that we would be coming together as a parish family. When I talk with my brother priests, I am quick to share how blessed we are here on the Olympic Peninsula. Despite the challenging distances and significant adjustments, there are amazing things happening. In the west region, Father Ed and the parishioners there are working on a sanctuary renovation at Saint Anne and (re)starting prison ministry in Clallam Bay. In the east region, Father Gali is bringing new prayer opportunities in the church (weekly Vespers) and to parishioner homes (rosary visits). In the central region, we are forming new bonds of common practice & prayer (joint ministries & leadership) as well as exploring liturgical traditions (I’ve got a delightful surprise coming in a couple weeks….but you’ll have to wait and see!).

The challenge ahead of us is not so much in the labors – labor that, quite frankly, we haven’t yet discerned! – but in the laborers. And this is the exhortation with which I will conclude: pray for God to illuminate and inspire you in being part of the work of our parish family. Wonderful things are already happening within and around us! Let us be sure to join the Lord in the vineyard, that we might be part of His great and fruitful harvest.