Lord we pray "Help me to continually increase parish vitality and reflect the presence of Christ in the world."

Browsing The Carpenter's Bench Blog

The Reasons We Love St. Joseph's Church

There are so many great reasons to love St. Joseph's Church.  For this post, I am going to narrow my reasons down to 3, a sort of Top 3 list, so to speak. 

One aspect I have always liked about our parish is all of the opportunities to get involved.  I think of St. Joe as running on volunteer power.  There are always chances to volunteer.  I like to know that what I am doing is making a difference, and I feel that at St. Joe.  When I volunteer, I don’t feel like I’m just taking up space or showing up for appearances, I always feel like I’m accomplishing something. 

Another of my favorite things about St. Joseph’s Church is the feeling of community.  I think part of it is because we are a small church, so there is opportunity to meet and get to know most of the parishioners.  I think another part is the way we work together to provide for the needs of the parish.  No one ever shied away from asking me to get involved, and I love the opportunity to serve as part of the St. Joe community.

My other big reason for loving St. Joe is that I very much enjoy listening to Fr. Rob’s sermons.  Not only is he very knowledgeable, but he shares that knowledge in a way that is easy to understand.  In addition, he seems to dig deep into himself to bring out personal experiences to relate how the Gospel impacted him and impacts us all in a very meaningful way. 

What about you?  What are some of your reasons for loving St. Joseph Church? 

Comments

  • Patricia

    I love St. Joseph and would like to share 3 reasons as well.

    1. First impressions ~ First impressions are very important and I think from a friendliness standpoint we do this well. After moving from Danville where we attended Mary, Queen of Peace, along with experiencing back surgery we had fallen away from the faith. When we first joined St. Joseph we had been parish searching. When we walked through the door we were greeted by Lillian Plummer and Helen Fougnie ... you would have thought they had known us for years ... the friendliness and sense of warmth we felt from them was so profound, we were immediately 'hooked'.

    2. Sense of family ~ Part of this has to do with the small size of the parish, but that is only a very minor part. We truly are a family here at St. Joseph, we honestly care for one another. Hugs and expressions of concern are genuine and heartfelt.

    3. "...we've got each others backs." ~ Father Rob said it best during one of his homilies "I love St. Joseph because we've got each others backs." I immediately understood what he meant and though I could give millions (well maybe only hundreds) of examples, I'd like to share just one which made a huge and lasting impression on me.

    Kevin and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary on July 21, 2013. We reserved the Hall and sent out 120 invitations; as the date grew closer I became very nervous about how I was going to prepare and serve all of the food I'd bought. I approached Jim Pfennig and the Men's Club asking for help. He immediately said, "sure, not a problem." I ended up with about 10 people from both the Men's Club and the Altar Society helping to make sure our celebration ran smoothly with no problems whatsoever.

    I can think of no other parish I'd have gotten a response such as this!

    Are there bigger parishes with prettier churches? Of course there are, but what we have at St. Joseph is unique and I've not found any thing like it in any other parish. St. Joseph will always be my parish family .... one I will cherish all my life.

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