Summer Hospitality Tips

The Office of Stewardship

Summer Hospitality Tips

It seems that summer is finally making its way to Western South Dakota. For many in our Diocese, summer means the arrival of out-of-town guests and tourists to our homes and churches. I was reminded of the young woman from Bismarck who came to Girls Totus Tuus Camp last year because of the warm welcome she and her family received at Blessed Sacrament in Rapid City while here visiting. And I also remember the story told by Ruth Durst of St. Ambrose’s in Deadwood. As part of their efforts to increase hospitality, they decided to have hospitality ministers stand outside on the steps of the church when the weather was good. This proved to be very enlightening. Parishioners watched as tourists drove around and around trying to find parking near the church. As it turns out, most visitors had no idea the church has a parking lot. It seemed clear that better signage was needed.

Interested in taking a quick pulse of hospitality in your parish?

As you might remember, the Office of Stewardship is working to update our web pages. In the course of looking over all that had been previously uploaded to our page, I found notes from a workshop at the 2016 International Stewardship Conference titled, “Parish Hospitality: Much More Than Greeters At the Church Door”. It is full of suggestions including:

Tips for the Front Office
Ways of Welcoming New Parishioners
Ways of Building a Sense of Belonging
15-Point Checklist for Hospitality
Rewards of Generous Hospitality

If you would like to use this resource, you may download it here.

If you are interested in pursuing Generous Hospitality in a more intentional way, consider entering the Stewardship Parish process. The Office of Stewardship is happy to guide you and provide support at each stage. Please give us a call if you would like to learn more.

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We're working hard to bring you the best resources to support you in your journey of bringing yourself and your parish to embody Generous Hospitality, Lively Faith, and Dedicated Discipleship.

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The Sacrifice of Being Welcoming

This Sunday we celebrate the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The Gospel reading recounts Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan. After Jesus comes up out of the water, heaven was opened and a voice came from heaven announcing, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” (cf. Luke 3:21-22) Notice that God the Father did not say, “you are my ONLY beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

The truth is that, we are all beloved children of God and despite our imperfections, He is well pleased with us. And although, we might in some sense know that is true, I think that much of the time we don’t really believe it. When Bishop Gruss first came to our Diocese, he often shared how he had been told his whole life, “Jesus loves you” but that he didn’t really know what that meant. It wasn’t until he was struggling as an adult that he began praying every day, “Jesus, if you are real and you do love me, show me that love in a real and concrete way today.” He says that prayer changed his life. In fact, that prayer is the reason we have him as our Shepherd in the Diocese of Rapid City. Bishop Gruss knew that Jesus loved him; he hadn’t experienced that love.

Bishop Gruss’ example teaches us about the importance of prayer. He did not experience the love of God in his own life until he began praying in a very deliberate, consistent and intentional way. Prayer is essential. That is why it is a central element in our Stewardship initiative under the pillar of Lively Faith.

This experience of God’s love comes directly to us from Him in prayer. However, it comes to us through the actions of others as well. Many years ago, I read a book by Dr. Ross Campbell called, “How to Really Love Your Child.” As a psychiatrist, he had worked with hundreds of families who were struggling. He said that he had never met a parent who said they didn’t love their child, but that he had worked with hundreds of kids who didn’t think their parents loved them. Clearly, there was a disconnect — parents who loved their children but weren’t able to convey that love in a way the child received it.

I am convinced this doesn’t just happen in the parent-child relationship. It happens in other relationships in our lives and it happens to us as church communities, when we desire to share the Love of Christ with others but that message is not given in a way that others receive or experience the tender love of Jesus. I believe the Holy Spirit has given us the gift of our stewardship initiative to assist us in bridging this gap.

The pillar of Generous Hospitality and the concrete examples of how this is done in the characteristics, as well as the witness of so many inside and outside of our Diocese of how hospitality is lived out in concrete, real actions provides us with real and practical help in this area.

I continue to be challenged to grow in my own hospitality. I recently read the beautiful new apostolic exhortation by Bishop Olmsted on the family (http://www.catholicsun.org/2018/12/30/complete-my-joy-in-major-new-document-bishop-olmsted-urges-fathers-mothers-to-commit-their-families-to-a-deeper-relationship-with-christ/). In it, he shares this quote from St. Teresa of Calcutta:

“And so less and less we are in touch with each other. The world is lost for want of sweetness and kindness. People are starving for love because everybody is in such a great rush.”

Generous Hospitality requires an attentiveness to the other. One of the biggest obstacles in my own life to this attentiveness is my tendency to rush through the day. Slowing down requires a sacrifice on my part; to sacrifice my time and attention and give it to another. It also requires a certain sensitivity to how others are experiencing life.

This was brought to my attention yesterday when I witnessed a friend reach out to a visitor from Colombia. He offered to take our visitor fishing or hunting and I think his offer came from a genuine desire to make this man feel welcome here and a willingness to sacrifice time to give that gift. I thought to myself, it is pretty easy to wish this man Buenos Días and go on with my day. Both my friend’s example and Mother Teresa are challenging me to a greater hospitality.

Living this Catholic Way of Life

Looking to deepen your practice of one of the four Stewardship Pillars? Click the image of the one below to find the best of our blogs and resources for each pillar.

Helping you live this Catholic Way of Life

The Office of Stewardship exists to help you build a Stewardship Parish and Cultivate a Catholic Way of Life.

We're working hard to bring you the best resources to support you in your journey of bringing yourself and your parish to embody Generous Hospitality, Lively Faith, and Dedicated Discipleship.

Enter your name and email to receive weekly reflections on Living this Catholic Way of Life.

10 Ways to Practice Hospitality at Christmas

This past weekend we saw an article published by the Catholic News Agency on the efforts being made in the Archdiocese of Detroit to welcome people to their parishes this Christmas. The Communications Director for the Diocese says in the article, “We target at Christmas knowing there are people who come there for the first time or they haven’t been with us for a while,” he said. “One of the things is we want to be unusually gracious and hospitable for people that come to our churches.” In preparation the Archdiocese hosted a one-day training for parish leaders. One of the speakers, Fr. Steve Pullis, offered 10 ways to practice hospitality this Christmas:

I found his talk inspiring and a good reminder of the importance of practicing Generous Hospitality as the Christmas season approaches. Fr. Pullis’ talk can be found here:

While you are on You Tube, I would encourage you also to take a look at the talk given by Fr. John Riccardo. Fr. Riccardo will be our keynote speaker at the Summit in 2019. MARK YOUR CALENDARS for SEPTEMBER 28, 2019. I am excited to have him here. I think his talks will be inspiring!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgArb7bBUFs
Fr. Riccardo will be our keynote speaker at the Summit in 2019!
Mark your calendars for September 28, 2019

Living this Catholic Way of Life

Looking to deepen your practice of one of the four Stewardship Pillars? Click the image of the one below to find the best of our blogs and resources for each pillar.

Helping you live this Catholic Way of Life

The Office of Stewardship exists to help you build a Stewardship Parish and Cultivate a Catholic Way of Life.

We're working hard to bring you the best resources to support you in your journey of bringing yourself and your parish to embody Generous Hospitality, Lively Faith, and Dedicated Discipleship.

Enter your name and email to receive weekly reflections on Living this Catholic Way of Life.

Bartimaeus the Steward

In response to my email of October 11th, I heard back from several of you who shared with me some of the ways your parish is paying attention to the small details in order to be more hospitable. Thank you!

Here are a couple:

Last year we did a hoe down chili cook-off in January. It was nice to have a bit of fun in January, seems like a blank space in the calendar.
The biggest impact OLBH has had on welcoming families has been to stock the nursery with various sizes of diapers and wipes and pull ups for the times you forget or run out of something while here. It is very inexpensive – we bought four small diaper packages a year ago and are just now running out – but it makes parents feel welcome.

I am sure there are many ways parishioners around the Diocese are finding simple but meaningful ways to extend hospitality. It is a joy to hear of some of them.

This past Friday I returned from a 12-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The whole trip was filled with grace and blessings and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to go. The pilgrimage was led by Fr. Jacques Phillippe and Sr. Magdalit Bolduc from the Community of the Beatitudes. This morning I was thinking about something Fr. Phillippe said to us on the evening of our arrival. He said that often times we believe that we really cannot change or be changed. “That is just the way I am”, we say to ourselves. Fr. Phillippe said that attitude, although quite common among Christians, speaks of a lack of Christian hope. We lack the virtue of hope in the power and work of God’s grace in our lives if we believe that we cannot change.

Both unconsciously and consciously I think we often live and act out of this belief, both in how we think about ourselves personally, but also about how we think about the institutions we are a part of, whether it be the workplace, school, or church. We are dissatisfied and unhappy about the status quo, but feel a sense of hopelessness about it ever changing. On the other hand, we also experience as Americans this almost blind belief that if something is new it must also be good and we relentlessly pursue the next best thing; in technology, in diets, in entertainment; in educational and parenting practices, in church programs. Interesting how we hold these seemingly contradictory extremes simultaneously in our daily lives; on the one hand thinking things will never change while at the same time, relentlessly searching for and trying new things, throwing out the old and moving from one new novelty to the next. All the while remaining restless.

It is only in actively seeking Christian maturity and Christian hope that we can navigate between the tendency to move back and forth from these two extremes. The mature disciple, like Mary, is open and docile to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and therefore, not rigid; but open to change. At the same time, the mature disciple is rooted firmly in the stable rock of Faith; is growing in prudence and right judgment and so is not easily blown one direction and then another by quickly changing fads.

Both as individuals and as church communities, it is important to be watchful and attentive to staying within this balance. On the one hand, we must hold firmly to the belief expressed in the Book of Revelation, “See I make all things new” (21:5), firmly rooting ourselves in Hope which frees us to be open to the promptings and guidance of the Holy Spirit. At the same time, the heritage of the Church carries with it the wisdom of the ages and we must guard against absorbing a cultural disdain for anything “old” and a presumption that we are wiser than those who have gone before us. As we talk about and discern how to move from “maintenance” to “mission” (p. i, Through Him, With Him and In Him), as we argue with one another about whether or not the church is changing too much or not enough, as we debate about this new program or that or about whether to abandon “programs” all together, let us continue to encourage one another to do so always with fervent prayer and commitment to growth in virtue.

In this Sunday’s Gospel, Bartimaeus provides us with just such encouragement. He cries out to the Lord with great faith and with great persistence – a model for prayer. In a gesture of great detachment, he throws his cloak (his only security in his current state of life) to come to the Lord. Honestly sharing his desire with the Lord, he is healed and “followed him on the way” – literally, “followed in His footsteps”. Bartimaeus is a steward and a disciple, a man of fervent, persistent, and honest prayer who trusts completely in the Lord and follows in His footsteps. Let us all strive to do likewise.

Living this Catholic Way of Life

Looking to deepen your practice of one of the four Stewardship Pillars? Click the image of the one below to find the best of our blogs and resources for each pillar.

Helping you live this Catholic Way of Life

The Office of Stewardship exists to help you build a Stewardship Parish and Cultivate a Catholic Way of Life.

We're working hard to bring you the best resources to support you in your journey of bringing yourself and your parish to embody Generous Hospitality, Lively Faith, and Dedicated Discipleship.

Enter your name and email to receive weekly reflections on Living this Catholic Way of Life.

With Hospitality, the Small Details Matter

Bishop Gruss has often observed that as we strive to live lives of Generous Hospitality, the details matter. Attentiveness to small details is an important aspect of hospitality.

In August, my daughter and daughter-in-law attended a day and a half retreat hosted by the organization Blessed Is She. One of the things they shared with me was that those organizing the event had partnered with a company that sells beauty products and the company had put together baskets for each bathroom containing small bottles of their lotion, soap and perfume. In addition, they added breath mints, Tylenol and Tums, purse-sized packages of Kleenex, feminine products, diapers and wipes.

My girls were impressed by this extra touch of hospitality. The expensive lotion and other items conveyed, in a practical and concrete way, the organizers desire to pamper their guests. The diapers and wipes were a special welcome to the many nursing mothers who had infants with them for the event.

Perhaps it isn’t always practical to have such a basket in our parish bathrooms, but it does cause me to wonder: have we taken a look at our bathrooms and other small, easily ignored spaces in our parishes? Do they welcome our parishioners? Is there something extra we can do to make those spaces welcoming?

Thinking about these welcome baskets also encouraged me to think about how family-friendly our churches are. Is it easy to bring infants to church and take care of them there? Intentionally making our churches welcoming to small children, infants and those that care for them is a practical way to live out our pro-life commitment and is a great thing to think about during the month of October when we celebrate Respect Life Sunday.

Sometimes small things make a big impression. For instance, I have been very impressed by the umbrellas I have seen at several of our parishes. Although we don’t get tremendous amounts of rain here, what a beautiful act of hospitality it is to have someone walk a guest to their car with an umbrella during a rainstorm. I am sure
there are many other small ways we can practice hospitality. What ideas do you have or have you implemented in your parish?

Living this Catholic Way of Life

Looking to deepen your practice of one of the four Stewardship Pillars? Click the image of the one below to find the best of our blogs and resources for each pillar.

Helping you live this Catholic Way of Life

The Office of Stewardship exists to help you build a Stewardship Parish and Cultivate a Catholic Way of Life.

We're working hard to bring you the best resources to support you in your journey of bringing yourself and your parish to embody Generous Hospitality, Lively Faith, and Dedicated Discipleship.

Enter your name and email to receive weekly reflections on Living this Catholic Way of Life.