February 2025 - Family 39 Update

From the Pastor – Interim Report on Partners in the Gospel Process



Dear friends, members of the faith communities who have become Partners in the Gospel together as Parish Family #39: Our Lady Queen of Heaven, Holy Disciples, Our Lady of Good Counsel, and Saints Cosmas and Damian.

After several years of conversations across the Archdiocese, we are now seven months into the process of implementing the “Partners in the Gospel” process for our four churches, on the slow, gentle, gradual road towards becoming a single parish together after several MORE years.

So far, you may not have noticed much difference, apart from getting a fresh set of three priests circulating among our churches, and a few minor changes to our calendar. All of the obvious changes you’ve seen so far are really no different from the sort of changes that happen EVERY time a parish welcomes a new Pastor. So . . . some of you might be wondering what all the fuss is about, or what’s “really going on” behind the scenes.

So, after seven months into Partners in the Gospel, I would like to bring you up to speed.

Our whole agenda during this first year has been basically two things: (1) getting to know each other, and (2) laying the groundwork for the process of growing together into a single parish. Before I say any more, let me reassure what “becoming a single parish” is NOT. We do not have any plans to close any of our churches or discontinue regular worship anywhere within our new parish family. Even at the END of this process, when we are officially named as a new, combined parish, I don’t anticipate the need for this to change.

Much of the work that’s already happened this year has to do with bringing our new priests onboard, coordinating our schedules, getting special training for staff and key volunteers, and keeping “business as usual” running in all four of our communities’ priests settled into homes: Fr. Navy and Fr. Bhaskar are sharing the Spanaway rectory while I am living in the Puyallup rectory. 

We have put together a master calendar of presiders for all of our Masses and special liturgies, and are in the process of developing a shared master calendar for ALL of our special church events. We have been very intentional about trying to invite people from all four communities to one another’s parties and special events, and many folks are truly enjoying getting to know a new set of brothers and sisters in Christ. Our parish staff have been even MORE intentional about this process, by having a few all-Family staff meetings and a shared all-staff spiritual retreat, as well as forming a Parish Family Leadership Team that includes the Pastor, the Pastoral Assistants for Administration and an additional staff member involved in either liturgy, faith formation or both from each of our communities. This Leadership Team is paying attention to all of the things that concern our set of communities as a whole.

Since our churches are spread out over a large geographical area, one of our early projects, already underway, is to improve communication and coordination by bringing our technology together. This involves linking our websites together, developing a shared master calendar, and eventually networking our computers and our telephones across ALL of our parish office spaces (and portable laptops).

I have always believed that it’s much more important to do things WELL instead of doing them QUICKLY, so we are taking our time to get all these things done. With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, our new shared parish will develop naturally, organically, instead of being imposed from the top down.

The next step in this process is to begin formulating something the Archdiocese is calling a “One Parish through this time of transition. We now have our Plan”. This Plan will be our roadmap towards continuing to bring our faith communities together under a single administration and a shared life of fellowship, worship, teaching/learning and service, so that   eventually we can be named as a single parish.   The “One Parish Plan” will answer questions like, “What are our staffing needs under this new system?” “Which of our programs and services should operate on all four of our campuses, and which would be more effective if they’re consolidated in a single location?” “How can we be stronger TOGETHER in our shared mission of proclaiming the Good News and being of service to our neighbors in need?” “How are we going to bring our members together around a shared vision of who we are and what we’re called to be and do TOGETHER?” There will be plenty of additional details to work out, but these are the core questions.

In order to put this plan together, I will be working with our Parish Family Leadership Team to put      together a new, shared consultative body called the “Parish Family Advisory Council”. Even though all four of our communities already each have a Pastoral Council of their own, THOSE bodies already have enough on their plate, and can’t really take this work on. Besides, putting them all together into one group would create something too large to be effective, and it would be a NIGHTMARE to coordinate that many calendars for a regular meeting!

So, my vision is to find one person from each of our four communities who is already serving on either the Pastoral Council or the Finance Council, plus one additional person serving at large from each community, to meet regularly over the next couple   of years to formulate this plan, in and through regular WIDE consultation of our entire membership. We will be looking for visionary folks who know our community well, and who are willing to work together to seek the common good of the WHOLE community, rather than representing the limited interests of just one church or one point of view. Our task will be to find a way not just to preserve the goodness that is already happening in our four churches, but find a way to make us stronger together, and even more faithful and effective servants of the Kingdom of God. We think this is what Pope Francis and our Archbishop have in mind when they talk of Synodality and Co-Responsibility.

In order to find the right people, and the right MIX of people, we will be using a formal, written application process.

The Parish Family Leadership Team and I will review the applications, then put this team together. As we make progress on building the plan, we will keep the whole community well informed at every step along the way. There will be a great deal of work involved, but we hope that it will be a labor of love, and that it will bear tremendous fruit for all of us AND for the Kingdom of God. The bottom line is that, whether we choose to do this work or not, we WILL become a single parish together in just a few short years. IF we do this work intentionally and with great love, the end result can be joyous and fulfilling for us all. The Parish Family Leadership Team and I would like to invite you to prayerfully consider if this is an opportunity for you to share your gifts with the Church. Also, if you know someone in the parish you think would contribute to the newly-formed Parish Family Advisory Council, please tell them and ask them to discern if this is calling them. Sometimes that little suggestion is the support someone needs to feel confident in stepping up.

 Gratefully – (Fr.) Woody