Lay Leadership

Dear sisters & brothers in Christ,

I pray that you are blessed and doing well. As I mentioned last week, we welcome Deacon David Sacha to our pulpit for the 4:15 pm & 9:00 am masses. May the spirit of God be with him and may this be the beginning of a lifetime of preaching the “Good News” as good news. I ask that you keep Fr. Chung in your prayers as he spends a little time with his family in Seattle. Afterwards, he will join with a group of young Redemptorists in Oconomowoc for a weeklong workshop/retreat. Let us pray for all of these young men, that they will be blessed in their ministry as Redemptorist priests and brothers, and bear abundant fruit for our God. Hopefully, some of these men will one day minister right here at St. Alphonsus. And while we pray for them, let us not lose sight of the needs of the broader Church, which is the reason the bishop has launched this capital campaign, “Our Shepherds, Our Future.”

While I still believe in the need for more priest & religious vocations, there is also an ever-growing role for the laity. There are all of the traditional lay ministries, but we also see lay people doing some less traditional ministries, such as, preaching. The whole idea behind The Jesus Mission, which was done here at St. Al’s for the very first time anywhere, was that it was created in a way that anyone can use it. The reason it is not connected to the Sacraments is so you do not have to have a priest. In the future, our seminarians and lay Redemptorists will be offering this Jesus Mission across the country.

Chung and I are of like mind in promoting lay leadership in the parish. We know that the need for lay people to step into ministries that may have once been performed by priests continues to grow. And speaking of ministries, as we come further out of the pandemic, we need everyone to return to ministries. If you didn’t have a ministry, this is a perfect time to choose one. If your time is limited, I recommend a liturgical ministry since you are at church anyway, and we certainly need ushers, lectors, Eucharistic ministers, sacristans, and choir members. I ask each of you to spend some time in prayer contemplating where God is calling you to minister in the vineyard.

In the Redeemer, Fr. Rick