Serving God's People

Serving St. Timothy Parish People – Pastoral Plan

At the Town Hall meetings, I promised I would take on board comments made in relation to our parish, along with those made in responses to the survey. I asked the sub-committee to evaluate all of them and list those we could do something about. I then passed these to Parish Council and invited them to focus on both short-term and long-term plans. They have spent the past two months working on them and below are the result of their labors.

I would welcome any comments or questions you might have before I finalize it. You can contact Fr. Malley at the parish office at 813-968-1077.

Short Term

Communication:

• Introduce a St. Timothy Facebook site
• Install a permanent web cam in the church with screen in the Narthex, as we had for Christmas and Easter.
  • As well as being used on these occasions, it can be used for many communication areas, such as messages and announcements weekly.
  • Showcase pictures from events and ministries at St. Timothy.
  • It could be connected to our web site and we could stream our Sunday Mass to our homebound.

Welcoming and Inviting:

• Formation of a Welcoming Committee – “Welcoming Ambassadors” - When new parishioners register, their names will be forwarded to this committee, one of whom will contact them and visit them and give them a welcoming basket, including an invitation to the pancake breakfast.
  • There will be a special table with a table cloth reserved for them so others will know they are new to our parish and can stop by and introduce themselves.
• Quarterly campaigns to get the parish involved like “reach out and say hello”.
• Work closely with Catholics Come Home ministry to identify people who might need to have questions answered, resolve hurt and/renew faith. Have a quarterly “Bring a Friend to Mass” Sunday.

Liturgical Services:

• Expand the Liturgical Committee so that we can devise other forms of liturgical prayer and devotion.

Managing Your Money:

• We have created a program based on Christian principles to help people with financial budgeting.

Long Term

Diversity:

• Increase awareness of Diversity.
• Explore and identify the diverse cultures among our parishioners.
• Develop a committee to identify opportunities for acknowledging and celebrating the cultures among us.

Adult Formation:

• Explore models of best practices in and outside of the diocese.
• Work with our Cluster Group of parishes to hire a qualified person to draw up a program and oversee its implementation in our parishes. This person will also oversee a program for Young Adults.
• Explore new technologies to reach out to the faithful and enhance formation and information (podcast readings of the day, webinars).

Youth Ministry:

• Bring together the Youth Ministers in our Cluster to work on joint programs e.g. retreats, pilgrimages. Perhaps a group of our youth to go to Lourdes with a group of handicapped children.