This past week, St. Matthew hosted our grouping session. We came together to discuss the scenarios that we had received the prior week. This time, we broke out of our parish teams and reviewed the scenarios with representatives from each parish at each table.
This gave us the opportunity to reflect on the strengths and challenges of each scenario with a broader context than we have at our individual parishes.
Our next steps as a grouping are to conduct our meetings with our parish leadership groups and conduct our parish-wide session. The purpose of the parish-wide session is to keep everyone up to date on where we are at in the process, to introduce the scenarios that are under discussion and to obtain feedback from a broader audience on the strengths and challenges of each scenario.
At the end of our grouping process, we are tasked with submitting a proposal to Cardinal Cupich on a scenario that we feel will best serve our grouping going forward, as it advances the Mission of the Church. Our report will contain our recommendations, and our rational for those recommendations. However, the ultimate outcome is decided by Cardinal Cupich based on the information that he receives from the grouping and the Renew My Church advisory groups of the Archdiocese of Chicago. This is because all decisions need to be made in the context of the needs of the larger Church.
Please join us on Monday, September 26th at 6:30pm in the church. Your participation in this process is important and your feedback will be collected as part of our parish report. We hope to see you there.