January 27, 2011
 

Dear Parishioners:

The Christmas Season came to end on Sunday, January 9 and the Season of Ordinary Time in the Church’s Liturgical Calendar has begun.  It is now time for us to move forward in our merger work.  We are writing to you to update you on the status of the merger process.

The Bishop has accepted the recommendations that we submitted.  We now are ready to begin the legal and canonical (Church rules) process of merging our two sites.

You may remember that our recommendation included that we want to maintain both worship sites and that we will not do any structural changes except if required to complete them by either the Madison Diocese or the City of Madison

  These goals include that we need to:

1. legally and canonically merge our two churches
2. hire a Business Manager
3. hire a Youth Minister/Director of Religious Education
4. form an Evangelization Committee whose primary focus will be to invite all of our parishioners to officially register in our Good Shepherd Parish, to bring those parishioners who are non-attending back to our liturgies and to invite and add new members to our registry

Beginning in February, Grant Emmel, the diocesan director of planning, will be helping us address the many different steps to accomplish the merger of our two churches.  We anticipate that this process will take several months to complete.  We anticipate that near the end of this process, we will have a liturgy that celebrates our heritages, our parishioners and the promise of our strong faith for our future.

Please continue to pray with us for the success of our merger.

God’s blessings,

Merger Committee

Msgr. Tom Baxter      Sr. Kathleen Loughrin      Denice Barajas         Bob McKee

Mary Burke                Fr. Manuel Méndez      Mike Childers            Bill Morehead

Claribelle Vera Heredia      Bonnie Moschkau      Sr. Zita Simon