Thanks to all of you who have participated in the ALL THINGS NEW surveys and provided
data and feedback over the past few months. The information has been enlightening,
educational and fruitful as we continue to ask ourselves what our parishes, ministries
and institutions need to look like to effectively share our Catholic faith in a way that is
suitable and sustainable for our children and generations to come.
The next step in this multi-year process is to hear more robustly from you, our
parishioners, about our parish. The Archdiocese of St. Louis will host over 350 listening
sessions throughout our 178 parishes between October 8 – November 19, 2022. Our
Parish Listening Sessions will be on Monday, November 7 and Wednesday, November
9. You are invited to register for our listening sessions beginning mid-September
at https://allthingsnew.archstl.org/.
Parishioners must register to attend a Listening Session. Registration will close once
the designated room’s seating capacity is reached. There will not be additional
opportunities for Listening Sessions other than the ones scheduled for our parish.
Each listening session, including ours, will be facilitated by volunteer parishioners from
a different parish. These trained facilitators will share pre-recorded messages from
Archbishop Rozanski and Fr. Chris Martin, Vicar for Strategic Planning, with an
overview of All Things New, a planning area overview and multiple DRAFT model
options to consider for our respective planning area. A brief time will be allowed for
small group discussion and facilitated large group feedback.
The goals of the listening sessions are to engage as many parishioners as possible in
understanding the current state of our parish and diocese and to solicit feedback from
as many of you as possible about the DRAFT models options for their planning area.
After the final listening session in each planning area, the Archdiocese of St. Louis will
make public the content presented at all the parish’s Listening Sessions in that planning
area and will offer an additional opportunity for parishioners to provide open-ended
feedback through an online survey. The survey will remain open until December 31,
2022. Parishioner feedback to the models is critical, as it will be used to help shape the
future of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
For you to be fully prepared with accurate information before our parish listening
sessions, you will have access to our Parish Workbook. The Archdiocese of St. Louis
has created Parish Workbooks as a supplementary resource to help us prepare for the
listening sessions. The workbooks are meant to equip you with data about the
Archdiocese of St. Louis, our local planning area, and our own parish. Our Parish
Workbook is posted on allthingsnew.archstl.org for anyone to view.
Please continue to pray for the gift of true discernment so that we may continue to do
the will of God in all things! Come, Holy Spirit!