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September 19, 2020Our Ministry 2025 Team for both parishes [includes parish Lay Directors, chairs of the Pastoral and Finance Councils, DREs, and others from each parish] 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 visit on our website [https://cherokeecountycatholics.org/ministry-2025] and/or review the June 4th , July 16th, August 6th, August 20th and the September 3rd 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.