Refreshing Our Key Communications

Have you noticed the changes? It is more important than ever to stay connected in this “digital age”, and as such we have continued to cultivate multiple forms of communication within our collaborative parishes and beyond. This is especially important in part because we each prefer to get our information through particular forms of media, but also because we are all inundated with so much information, that we need to be deliberate in sharing consistent and reliable content about our Catholic faith, parish communities, news, and activities in a variety of ways. Presently, our four primary forms of communication are the church bulletin, our pwc.church website, email, and social media. Our website and our bulletin have been in need of some updating, and since our website had a major relaunch just a few years ago, we started with the bulletin.

In response to some discussions, we had in the Collaborative Pastoral Council (CPC) over a period of time, I recently formed a small “focus group” to help me and the staff take a fresh look at the bulletin for our parishes. Both parishes were represented by a few CPC members and other attentive parishioners, which provided a varied cross-section of our collaborative parishes. We talked about the primary purposes of our communications and which parts of our community the print bulletin reaches. Among other good news, we celebrated the fact that many of our homebound parishioners receive our bulletin when our volunteers visit them with Communion, keeping them both sacramentally and socially connected with their church community!

While not a radical change to our bulletin, we hope these updates help meet the needs and desires of our parishioners. Some of the adjustments include: a new layout to the inside cover for easier reading that features a section at the bottom for special prayers and weekly highlights; even more consistency in the font type and size for greater readability; a new layout for this “Pastoral Column” that keeps it from being split between pages; a new “Reflection & Discussion” section added to help us all to keep growing in our faith; a new layout for the middle pages with parish-specific information generally featured in the outer columns, and similar parish articles united in the middle columns (e.g., prayer intentions, St. Vincent de Paul news, etc.); and the return to a more consistent “Kid’s Corner” on the last page, along with “Faith Formation” and “Community Involvement”.

Please give yourself a little time to adjust to this new look and structure of one of our primary vehicles of communication. Next, we will form a different focus group to help us update and streamline our website. Social media and email improvements are being considered as well. But we need your help to keep our communities reviving and thriving by taking a little time each week to look at our church collaborative communications – and share the information with others!

Thank you and Easter Peace to you,