Friends,

We have been talking throughout the summer a out how to shorten the announcements at the end of the Sunday Liturgy. I’ve sought your feedback, and have received some. I am thankful for that. I’ve thought about this a lot too. And at Liturgy on Monday I think I figured it out. We will have essentially NO announcements on Sundays. What does that mean?

We regularly send out information via email, post on FaceBook, Twitter, Telegram, our web site. We post flyers in church. The fact of the matter is – you have ample opportunity to learn what is happening at STV. It is not clear to me that having 10-15 minutes of announcements on Sunday really adds value. So I’d like to give you back the gift of time.

That being said, there are a few really important things that sometimes we need to talk about on Sundays. So how will we deal with those? How do you get the word out to the parish in such situations? You send me an email by 8:00 p.m. on Thursdays to get your announcement into this handout that we will prepare every Sunday and have available at the kissing of the Cross. We’ll publish this on Sundays on our web site too, in case you can’t get to church:

THE SUNDAY FIVE

I’ll still invite folks to stay for lunch, etc., but my remarks will be super short. There will not be a request for folks to make announcements in church – everyone who needs to do that can send me an email by 8:00 p.m. on Thursday. Occasionally there will be a real emergency that needs to be addressed. Of course that will be allowed IF IT IS REALLY AN EMERGENCY. However, a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency for the rest of us. :) You’ll need to ask me about your emergency BEFORE we get to the end of the Liturgy though. I can’t make that decision on the fly with the Cross in my hand.

Thank you for your understanding. I ask your continued understanding as we transition to this new system. Surely there will be some hiccups. Surely there will be an announcement that someone feels is an emergency, but I don’t. :) I will ask your forgiveness in advance for that. This will take a bit of planning on our part too (to meet the Thursday deadline). But we have to get this fixed, and this is the best way I can figure out to make it work. And there is not better time than the present to get this done.

In Christ,

Fr. Gregory