Beyond Sunday…
In case you are wondering, the Beyond Sunday campaign is still in gear. As in all capital campaigns, there are several stages to the process. We are in the ‘quiet stage’ – where my team and I are making “house calls” with individual families. A few questions have come up regularly during the course of those meetings. Here is my version of a Q and A sheet addressing some of the issues raised.
1) Does the Archbishop get any of these funds? No – the funds are split (40/60) between St. Ann parish and the Roman Catholic Foundation of Eastern Missouri. (RCF) None of it goes to “Lindell”, as people used to call it.
2) For what will the RCF use their share of the funds? The short answer is Catholic Education. If I could use my own words – the RCF has three funding priorities. i) Tuition assistance for middle income families is first – both for children in Catholic grade schools, and in a more limited role, Catholic High Schools. ii) Helping schools maintain their academic excellence so they can compete with the public schools in their neighborhoods. iii) Best practices that will help transform our schools in the areas of Catholic Identity, teacher retention, and management.
3) When can I expect someone to call me? Letters are usually sent out a week or two before you will get a phone call to set up a meeting with one of our committee members.
4) Will everyone in the parish be invited to be a part of this mission? Yes.
5) When will the ‘public stage’ begin? The committee is working through our one on one meetings as quickly as we can. Since we are in Block ONE of the parishes con-ducting the campaign, we WILL be done by this Dec. 31st at the very latest.
6) Didn’t we just finish a capital campaign? Yes, the Faith for the Future Campaign just finished, which sup-ported the renovations of our seminary. All of those funds went to our seminary. What is different about this is that 40% of the Beyond Sunday funds will come directly back here to St. Ann parish. And with the increased threshold for scholarships, I suspect we will have even more families who will receive scholarships to send their children to our St. Ann School.
So, continue to pray for the success of the Campaign, both for what it will allow us to do here at St. Ann, as well as how it will help the mission of Catholic Education here in our Archdiocese.
ps – Thanks to the 47 people who came to the first meeting for the Parish Planning Process. I hope you found the time to be both an affirmation of this wonderful community as well as a challenge to be an even more evident expression of the Kingdom of God in our time… pps – Our FINAL meeting for this process is THIS SUNDAY, Sept. 27th beginning around 12:15 in the Parish Center…