But why?

There has been some confusion regarding the office unification move and I think it is important to remember that sometimes the scenarios we create in our head and conversations are far from the truth. So, I thought I would offer four clarifications as to what is happening:

1.      No Church is Closing! There have been some people that have claimed that either the next thing to happen is that we will be closing churches or that I have some secret plan to make everybody go to one church building. These claims are blatantly false and untrue. If parishes are taken care of and people are there to support, they will remain. We will make every effort to ensure church buildings are utilized for Mass, other sacraments, and funerals. All are encouraged to take responsibility for our campuses.

2.      You cannot co-mingle funds across parishes! This rumor is not only false, but in fact, it would be illegal for me to pour every other parish’s accounts into one parish’s account. The law of the church forbids this, as well. So, how do shared costs work? There is a shared cost agreement that each parish finance committee agreed upon. Each parish is then billed monthly for these costs and in turn paid by each parish to the parish that takes on the initial cost. In the case of our Family, Holy Angels pays for shared costs, such as priests’ salaries, and the other parishes reimburse Holy Angels. Thus, there is no combining of accounts, only the reimbursement for costs. We will share this breakdown as we did at the beginning of Beacons. But the percentage each parish pays is based upon number of registered families, Sunday Mass attendance, weddings, funerals, number of Masses in a year, and Catholic grade school enrollment (if applicable). This agreement is actively being updated and approved by finance committees from each parish. When we begin looking at becoming one canonical parish, we will begin looking how we will merge accounts. But we are not there yet, and thus, what I have stated above is the current reality.

3.      How am I going to be better served? As I have made it known, the goal here is to better utilize the current talent pool of our current parish staffs. This means their time will be utilized to make improvements to current practices. If your idea of service is based solely on convenience, I have two thoughts: First, we would like to make it easier when it comes to paperwork to have forms online, and forms in the church building itself at one of the entrances which can be filled out and deposited in the collection. Masses can be scheduled over the phone and Mass stipends put in a labeled envelope and turned in through collections or mail. We also want to make liturgical scheduling simpler for all generations. Second, is the convenience to you going to be greater in having fewer office hours? Perhaps not, but again this is meant to free employees and priests to have more time to serve others. That may mean less convenience for you personally, but it will mean we are working to increase your faith, the faith of your children, the faith of your grandchildren. The notion of “how am I served?” is too small, the question is how can we reach out to those do not know Christ, to those who have strayed from the path of Christ, and how do we increase the faith of those in the pews? This current pruning is oriented toward that tri-fold goal to bring all into an ever-deepening relationship with Jesus.

4.      There is no need for a reduction in work force. The office unification does not mean anyone needs to be let go. Their roles and responsibilities will adjust. Again, as long as we have the financial support of our parishes, there is no need to reduce our work force. Also, religious education staff are not moving as of now. We are still working through the best way to make that side of parish life work for our Family of Parishes as a whole. We will still have religious education at each parish campus as long as we have the students, the volunteers, and the resources. In short, like all our parishioners, I want all of our staff to be a part of the journey forward. It is going to look different than in the past, but I think the Lord (as He always does) has great things in store for our Family of Parishes. It is only for us to trust our Loving God.

Thank you to my staff who have given me so much honest feedback, support, and help over the past few months. They are truly the cream of the crop and a bunch I look forward to working more closely with as we continue to work on bringing our Family of Parishes together.

Peace in Christ,

Fr. Jarred Kohn