PARISH Increased Offering Campaign

Letter

- October 2, 2020 Letter From Msgr Randy

Submit a Prayer Intention

Spiritual connection is vital to new life and necessary to meet the current challenges according to the Gospel. You are invited to submit a prayer intention by emailing them to [email protected] or by writing them on a card and dropping them in the collection box. These intentions will be gathered and a regular petition will be offered for them during our daily and weekend masses. Prayer changes everything!

Two Year Goals of Increased Offering Campaign

In my letter of October 2^nd, I asked you, our parishioners, to review your contributions to St. Bernard and consider increasing your parish giving. I am making this request so we can continue both our current parish mission and also to work on improving our mission to the youth of our parish.

The three goals I have set for our parish of St. Bernard for the next 2 years are as follows:

1. Strengthen our Religious Educational offerings & Adult Educational Offerings

St. Bernard Parish has a good history of providing religious education (CCD) to our children and their families. In past few months we have reviewed what we offer and, due to the pandemic, have prepared appropriate lesson plans for teaching our children remotely and built the infrastructure to be able to provide the remote program until we are able to once again gather in our school building for classes.
As you are no doubt aware, remote learning is quite a skill set in and of itself so we have reached out to our local Catholic schools and asked qualified teachers who are already experienced with remote learning to help us. This will increase our costs but I strongly feel our children and their families are worth the extra expense. Moving forward, I would hope to retain some of these teachers to continue after we are back in the class room.

Secondly, I would like to provide more options for our parish families to increase their knowledge of our faith. We have a rich history of good Bible Study programs which, of course, I see continuing however with the recent advances of remote learning, there are now significantly more opportunities for us to provide some excellent speaker series programs where we would seek out noted scholars and theologians to provide St. Bernard with programs for us. Because there would be no travel expenses and extra time for the speakers, the cost of these programs are reduced. I envision we could have those who are comfortable meeting in one of our large spaces (e.g. cafeteria, church, etc.) with the speaker being remote. Of course, it could also be open to some who want to take advantage of this from home. While there are certainly costs involved, they are much reduced and the content of these sessions still excellent.

2. I would like to strengthen our youth ministry program and help our young members become stronger in their faith.

Our Youth Ministry at St. Bernard is a good program of spiritual growth and social gatherings for our high school teens. Under the direction of Mr. Sean O’Brien, we have provided many of our youth with life giving knowledge of Jesus Christ and how to integrate this in daily living. Having said this, and for some of the same reasons we can do more programs with our adults (goal #1), we can also provide more for our youth through noted motivational speakers, etc.

Further, I have asked Mr. O’Brien to increase the student involvement in our parish through various events where families can be involved.

3. I would like to continue to strengthen our financial position for the future and, in particular, our Upkeep Reserve account so we are well prepared to maintain the beautiful facilities we have.

Just like you with home ownership, there are always things that are in need of repair or replacing. There are six major buildings (church/office, pastoral center, rectory, 2 separate mausoleum buildings and cemetery office) on our 34+ acres plus a few smaller structures. With each of these we are managing the useful life of things like roofs, heating/cooling systems, appliances, windows, etc. Knowing when we expect to have to do these projects determines our budgets and financial needs for each year and your finance council and I have worked to save these funds and make the repairs and/or replacements when needed.

This fund is crucial to our future and it is prudent for us to build up these savings accounts so we are prepared when the expense hits us.

As your pastor, these are my goals and I hope you agree with this pastoral direction and find a way to help me see them accomplished. Through all of our efforts we will be able to continue to promote Christ’s saving message of hope and love.

To accomplish these goals, I need your help. At this time, I would ask you to prayerfully consider increasing your financial support to the parish, and if you are able to do so, complete the reply card that was with your letter and return it by mail or drop it in the collection box when you come to Mass.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to let me know.

Peace,

Msgr. Randy

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Bridgewater, NJ
Church open M - F: 7 AM - 4 PM; Sat & Sun, 8 AM - 1 PM

PARISH Increased Offering Campaign