Consider this… State of the Parish
This weekend’s bulletin contains our financial and spiritual report for the 2019 – 2020 fiscal year. Please take time to look over the information provided as it is important for all of us to know how our parish is doing.
If you attended the State of the Parish address on Friday evening, or watched from home I am sure you saw some information that is troubling and concerning.
St. Mary’s is a wonderful parish, but we need to be aware of some trends.
Participation in all sacraments has dropped over the past 5 years.
Enrollment in our Family Faith Formation Program has dropped 40% over the last six years.
School Enrollment has dropped 21% over the last 15 years, but only 1% since 2015. The trend in the Diocese is a drop of 17% in Catholic school enrollment over the last 5 years.
Our deficit is significant for this coming 2021-22 fiscal year, and will hit $202,512.
Our past Diocesan Assessment owed is $254,985
Some good news:
Giving Tuesday helped to raise $36,662 for specific projects at St. Mary’s and to relieve the deficit.
Our school is open for 5 day a week in person learning, and reenrollment for 2021-22 school year is going awesome!
Communication with the parish via social media and our Monday calls have connected people to their parish.
The parish received PPP funding to help pay employees during the COVID pandemic and has applied for round 2 of PPP funding from the Federal government. This will help our bottom line.
As we move forward, all of us need to be invested in St. Mary’s. We need to reach out to all who may be isolated, or those that we haven’t seen in awhile and extend an invitation to return to St. Mary’s. We are a family and we need each other. More of the plan I presented on Friday will be shared in next week’s bulletin on how we move forward in hope. One item I want you all to be aware of is beginning in February there will be a once a month financial update on total expenses and income each month to let you know where we are at.
I encourage all of us to consider how we can help make St. Mary’s more vibrant in the coming year, and if you can, please help us be financially stable through the gift of your donations.
Keep Smiling,
Fr. Bryan