CDS Parish Update (5/19/2021)

As advertised in our bulletins, pulpit announcements, and social media outlets, we held parish assemblies on May 12 & 13 to discuss the planning for the future of our parish.  (For those who were unable to attend the assemblies, we’re putting them online at our website (www.cdsmph.org) so that you can watch the assembly and participate in the same Q&A opportunities virtually.)  Over the next few weeks, we’ll also provide summaries on this page of the presentation we offered at the parish assemblies.  These summaries will discuss the viewpoints that parishioners shared in our Spring Survey, the work and results of our parish Task Force, and the recommendations that we received from our finance council and interim parish council.  In addition, we’ll print the common questions that people asked at our assemblies (and online), and provide answers to these questions.

This week, we’d like to share the viewpoints that you, our parish community, provided in our recent survey.  In March, we mailed a Spring Newsletter to each of the 5000 families registered in our parish.  We provided some background about the parish’s current financial situation, and asked you to respond to a short survey.  We also provided the opportunity to write in comments.  Over 250 responses were received (which we think represents 10-20% of our current actual parish member base).

In our newsletter, we pointed out that, in 2020, parish expenses were $350,000 greater than regular parish income.  (That sounds dire, but in 2019, expenses were nearly $600,000 greater than income, so we’re moving in the right direction!). We looked at the expenses of the parish as a whole and also the expenses associated with each of our six sites. We discovered that, with normal parish revenues in 2020, we weren’t even able to cover the expenses associated with running a parish with only one of our buildings!  So, we asked you what you thought that this information told us about our ability to sustain our parish.  Nearly 75% of respondents replied that they thought immediate action is necessary in order to create a sustainable future; around 25% said that they weren’t sure.  We then asked what you thought the best use of our resources are, and asked you to rate each suggested course of action as “best”, “OK”, “worst”, or “not a valid option.”  One course of action was “continue running a deficit and keep six church buildings open until we run out of money.”  Nearly every respondent replied that that suggestion was “worst”, “not a valid option”, or not even worthy of a response.

Our other two suggestions were to focus on ministry and evangelization for the parish as a whole, or to focus on evangelization of youth and young adults in our community.  Both received a significant amount of support, with “ministry for the parish as a whole” receiving the greatest number of positive responses.

We also invited you to provide your own comments.  We found that three comments were repeated most often by you in your responses: “we are unable to support six buildings, and we realize that some buildings will have to close”, “don’t delay – ‘rip off the band-aid’ and take action now!”, and “we think that we need one church building in Penn Hills and one church building in Monroeville”.

Your responses to our spring survey provided an important source of information for me and Fr Thom, and we value your opinions as we prayerfully discern the course of action we must take in the upcoming months.  Our parish councils provided an additional request: that we take a look at not only financial information, but also information about people – over the past decade, how many people have been coming to Masses in our churches and whether (and to what extent) our parish is shrinking or growing.  In next week’s bulletin, we’ll discuss these questions and provide a snapshot of our parish’s population over the past ten years.

Please continue to keep Christ the Divine Shepherd Parish and our parish family in your prayers!