Update on our Merger

August 28, 2011

In July, you received an update of the merger identifying three areas that we are focusing our energies on.   These three areas are 1.  Inventorying all of our properties at both our St. Joseph and St. James sites and our school; 2.  Registering our present members as the members of our new Good Shepherd Parish and 3.  Transferring our membership data to ParishSOFT and our financial records to QuickBOOKS to match the diocesan requirement for all churches to use the same software for parish management.  These efforts continue along with our bi-weekly phone conferences with the Director of Planning for Diocese, Eric Schiedermayer.

The inventorying officially begins on Sunday, August 28.  This process involves identifying and photographing all materials and equipment that we own at each of our sites.  Following a meeting on August 28 at 12:00pm at our St. Joseph site, several of our parishioners will help complete the inventorying.  Our goal is to have this work completed by the middle of October.

Our second initiative focuses on welcoming and registering all of our parishioners to our new Good Shepherd Parish.   This is a critical step in the merging of our two sites to ensure that we are in good communication with all of our parishioners.  We want to give everyone a warm invitation to be a real and active part of our new parish.  The first step in this process is a letter that we will send to all of our presently registered parishioners.  We will be asking each of you to register anew to become the foundation of our new Good Shepherd Parish.  This process will begin in September.  This will ensure that we will have accurate and complete information about all of our parishioners.  It will also be important that we do outreach to welcome new people and those who have lost a connection to our community.  There is great history and community that has created the people that we are.  Now, it is time to build on our heritage, to initiate our Good Shepherd parish.

Our third initiative is the combining and transferring of our parish records to ParishSOFT and QuickBOOKS.  Completing this task will accomplish two important goals.  One is to have all of our records combined under one fully faceted database software and the other is to have an easier means of completing the scheduled reports to the diocese.  This process has begun.  We will hope to complete this after the registration process is complete.   It needs to be complete before we finalize the merging process.

Remember, you will be receiving a letter of invitation and registration to the Good Shepherd Parish next month.  We will anxiously be waiting your reply to this letter.