More Knowledgeable Minds than Mine

As your pastor, I am ultimately responsible for a wide variety of things in our parishes: spiritual guidance of adults and children, employment and leadership of staff and volunteers, property management, and church finances, to name just a few. Personally, I have degrees in divinity, mechanical engineering, and canon law - but I'm frankly not qualified to manage the finances of two "small businesses" with budgets totaling a million dollars or more. Thanks be to God, we have more knowledgeable business minds to securely guide our management of the financial support you give your parish.  Since each parish maintains its own properties, debts and assets, each parish continues to have its own Parish Finance Council to monitor, advise, and sign off on their parish's fiscal management. The members of St. Martha PFC are: Kathy Parker (chair), Ron Garron, Tom Hines, and Joe Ferney. Ron served as chair for five years and recently stepped down due to other obligations, but I’m so grateful for his vision and leadership. The members of the St. Mary PFC are: Janet Frye (chair), Fran Ahern, Chris Defrank, Josh Person, and Pat Zeller. Chris will soon be leaving the council, but we benefited from his unique perspective: originally a St. Martha parishioner serving on that PFC, he then moved to Wrentham and graciously served on the other council! Thank you to every one of them for sharing their knowledge and business acumen in service of their parish and our collaborative.

In addition to the two Parish Finance Councils, we have Bill Nash as our Collaborative Business Manager to run our finances on a regular basis. A highly accomplished business leader, Bill left the corporate world and began putting his gifts to work for our parishes. I'm very grateful to have him as our go-to person for business questions. He manages each parish's finances separately, and he allocates expenses shared by both parishes according to the percentages recommended by both finance councils and approved by the pastor. For example, religious education salaries and supplies are split based on the percentage of students from each parish. Clergy expenses, on the other hand, are split evenly to show each parish has equal claim on our attention.

Like the Collaborative Pastoral Council I discussed last week, each Parish Finance Council shares in leadership of their parish as a standing Council with consultative voice. They have a right to all the financial information necessary to provide meaningful advice, which I must listen to with an open mind. Because significant expenses are shared by both parishes, each PFC is kept aware of the financial status of both parishes, and they generally prefer to hold their meetings together. I'm especially grateful for the PFC members who spoke at each of the Masses last weekend to provide you a parishioner's viewpoint on the practical status of each parish. Please pray for each of our PFCs and all parishioner efforts to work together, using our varied gifts and perspectives in complementary ways for the good of Christ's Church!