Update on the Saturday 5:30 Mass and Adult Faith Formation
In 2019, I announced that, after consultation with the Collaborative Pastoral Council, our clergy and the Sunday Experience Team, that our Collaborative Parishes would be adding a Saturday evening 5:30 pm Mass at St. Martha on a trial basis. This was a “leap of faith” for our collaborative, praying that it would be a way we could evangelize and share the good news by inviting people to strengthen their relationship with God and the Church.
In truth, there are many reasons not to have so many Masses in our collaborative. The Lord’s Day Mass is supposed to bring the faithful together in community and communion - ideally all at one Mass, as is the norm in many rural areas. Multiplication of Masses was driven largely by the number of people attending not being able to all fit in the church at once. Mass attendance has steadily decreased in parts of the world over the last 50 years. Locally, our weekend attendance is still at least 25-35% lower just since the start of the pandemic, and you probably noticed some summertime Masses with lower attendance.
Against this backdrop, we are excited to see the attendance at the Saturday 5:30 Mass has become a bit larger and more stable this spring and summer! Some of these participants are shifting their schedule from our other Masses, but we are also seeing new faces (and newly-returned faces) at the 5:30 and other Lord’s Day Masses. We will continue to evaluate these developments, but please know that any invitations or encouragement you are offering to others, and any positive words you are sharing about our parish communities and worship is helping. We are also doing our part in evaluating the feedback from our recent survey (results to be published this fall) and discussing it in our various leadership teams to see how we can respond to the needs of our parishioners and make our parishes centers of prayer, Christian community, and discipleship of Jesus Christ.
Living our mission in the Church to evangelize and share the good news, our Collaborative Parishes need to keep trying new ways to support every one of us in growing in our faith. In addition to encouraging people to participate in the Eucharist, this includes various kinds of adult faith formation. We will be restarting our highly successful Christ Life program this October by running the introductory series “Discovering Christ” over the course of seven Wednesday evenings (stay tuned for details). This will complement the Bible Study Fr. Lambert offers and our collaborative prayer times of Adoration and the Mary’s Garden Prayer Group.
If you are not already actively pursuing growth in your faith, you should consider factoring one of these adult faith formation opportunities into your schedule – now, or in planning your fall schedule. Please pray for these evangelization efforts to bear fruit spiritually for our parishioners and anyone else who joins us.