As part of our Ministry 2025 plan, we are working on building Teams for each parish to assist each parishes Pastoral Council.  Teams for each parish being formed are: LITURGY, FAITH FORMATION, BUILDINGS/GROUNDS, PARISH LIFE, and CEMETERY.  All of these teams assists the pastor and the Pastoral Council with the pastoral care of the parish including spiritual, faith formation, and care of the facilities and property.  If you would like to be a part of one of these teams, please contact Fr. Mark.  Thank you those who have responded.

Current active Teams:
  LITURGY TEAM-Immaculate Conception
  CEMETERY TEAM-Immaculate Conception
  FAITH FORMATION TEAM-Immaculate Conception
  FAITH FORMATION TEAM-Our Lady of Good Counsel
  MINISTRY 2025 TEAM-Catholic Communities of Cherokee and Holstein

Soon to be activated:
  PARISH LIFE TEAM-Immaculate Conception
  PARISH LIFE TEAM-Our Lady of Good Counsel

19 September 2020

Our Ministry 2025 Team for both parishes [includes parish Lay Directors, chairs of the Pastoral and Finance Councils, DREs, and others from each parish] have begun meeting to discuss the next steps in our plan to fulfill the plan presented to us by Deacon Mark Prosser, Director of Pastoral Planning for the Diocese, on behalf of Bishop Nickless and the Diocesan Pastoral Planning Committee.

Our Ministry 2025 Team met last evening to discuss the next steps in our plan.  Deacon Mark Prosser, Director of Pastoral Planning for the Diocese, presented the history of Ministry 2025, the status of the plan, and were we need to go from here.  The bishop and his Pastoral Planning Committee has instructed us to:

Merge Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish, Holstein via extinctive union with Immaculate Conception, Cherokee as a Secondary Church (retaining its individual church name) with all administrative duties, boards, lay ministry management and parish organizations centralized under one business plan operated out of Immaculate Conception’s administrative structure with leadership representation from all of the church locations, and to establish a modified parish grouping Mass schedule if necessary.

In other words, the parish of OLGC will be joined with the parish of IC with the OLGC facility being a satellite location for IC.  All parishioners of OLGC will become parishioners of IC [unless they choose to join another parish – i.e. Sacred Heart-Ida Grove].  Sunday, Holy Day, and weekday Masses will continue to be celebrated at the OLGC site.  Faith Formation and other activities will continue at the OLGC site.  The Finance and Pastoral Councils and various Teams [i.e. Liturgy, Parish Life, Cemetery] for both parishes will be merged with representatives from both sites.  Finances will be merged and managed by one bookkeeper with restricted accounts continuing to be used for their restricted purposes [i.e. OLGC Building Addition Campaign will only be used for the building at OLGC, Cemetery Fund only for the designated cemetery, etc.] just as is being currently done with the Maryhill funds inherited by IC when Visitation of the BVM-Maryhill closed in 2006.

This merger will not happen next week or next month as over the coming months our Ministry 2025 Team will be meeting to work on this merger to complete a smooth transition.

The fact is, we share many things in common: pastor, pictorial directory, Mass Offering account, website, Facebook page, cooperation between DRE’s, etc.

This merger will give us more opportunities to share resources, to become more efficient, and to focus more of our attention on evangelization and making more disciples for Jesus.

For more information, please stay tuned here for updates and/or review the June 4^th , July 16^th, August 6^th, August 20^th and the September 3^rd issues of The Lumen [formally known as THE CATHOLIC GLOBE] for articles with information about the additional planning, consolidations, mergers, and closings that the parishes of the Diocese of Sioux City will face in the coming months and years.

Questions that we need to address include:

1. 1. How do we create vibrant parishes, vibrant priests and deacons, and a vibrant Diocese?
   2. How do we become mission-driven rather than maintenance-driven?
   3. How do we protect our priests from burn out and so they can administer the parishes entrusted to them and provide the sacraments, evangelization, and fiscal oversight that is required of them?  That is: how do we help our priests to govern, sanctify, and evangelize our parishes to assist the Bishop in his role as chief shepherd of the Diocese and to help fulfill the mission of the Church given to us by Christ?
   4. What do we need to do to help our Diocese which has faced a great decline in the number of priests available to be pastors and parochial vicars for our 71 parishes in 33 parish groupings with ten [10] retirements coming in the next four [4] years and the possibility of only two [2] priestly ordinations in the next four [4] years?  The number of priests serving our Diocese has decline as follows:  1980 = 166; 1990 = 146; 2000 = 109; 2010 = 71; 2020 = 48.

19 September 2020