Glad You Asked That: Frequently Asked Questions Installment #8

We often receive questions from parishioners. Here is a question we have been hearing recently from the parish community along with our answer.

Question

Throughout the year we noticed a steady negative balance in the weekly contributions in the bulletin. How did Saint Patrick Parish finish the fiscal year (July 2015 – June 2016)?

Answer

What Does a Shortfall Mean for the Parish?
In terms of the bulletin weekly collection tally, we ended up $98,000 short of our goal of $1,073,000. What does that mean for the parish? Are we hurting financially? The best way to answer that is “Yes” and “No.”

Declining Mass Attendance is a Bigger Concern

First of all, thank you for your continued generosity to your parish community. Though our weekly collections did not meet expectations, other sources of income and close management of our expenses helped reduce the overall year end shortage to $72,000. The shortage was not unexpected. The Archdiocese informed us that whenever parishes change leadership they can expect to see up to a 10% drop in attendance and contributions. More challenging than this most recent shortage in contributions is the steady decline in attendance at Saint Patrick (and throughout our Catholic Church in America) for the past 10 years. The average weekly Mass attendance in 2006 was 1088, compared to 815 for 2016.

Meeting Our Financial Obligations Through Savings

In terms of our shortfall and its direct impact on the parish, we are fortunate to have a Parish savings account which enabled us to meet our financial obligations. However, we realize negative years like this are not sustainable over time. Nevertheless, we remain optimistic and trust in the Lord that things are moving in the right direction.

How We Are Moving Forward

Our plan moving forward to address these challenges, in consultation with the Finance Council and other parish leaders and staff, is two-fold:

• Outreach to attract and welcome new members to join us at Saint Patrick Catholic Church. Cultural Catholicism is no longer filling our pews.

• Better communication to parishioners about our individual fiscal responsibility to our church. If Saint Patrick Parish is going to continue growing into the kind of church community God is calling us to be, we all need to be willing to provide the resources, to the best of our individual ability.

As always, your feedback and questions are most welcome.

Saint Patrick – Pray For Us.

Kevin Lovejoy

Pastoral Coordinator
Saint Patrick Catholic Church & School

Glad You Asked That is a series of news articles addressing parishioner questions about parish life. Search the News Archives to check out past questions and answers.