Renew My Church
Deerfield/Lake Forest
Renew My Church Update: May 2023
Discernment Process
During the past few months, Holy Cross (Deerfield), St. Mary (Lake Forest) and St. Patrick (Lake Forest) Parishes engaged in the Renew My Church (RMC) review and discernment process. The Grouping Feedback and Discernment team (GFDT), which was made up of members from each community, met to review and discern how to respond to the call to renewal for the grouping’s parishes, including any potential changes to parish structures.
Based on their meetings and feedback gathered from the larger parish community, they submitted feedback to the archdiocese. The Archdiocesan Standards and Recommendations Commission, which includes representatives from across the Archdiocese ofChicago, reviewed the feedback and other information, including financial summaries and parish trends.
Cardinal Cupich and Bishop Grob are grateful to the parish leaders who gathered as a Grouping Team, as well as all the parishioners who offered feedback through the discernment process.
Outcome
In the past few weeks, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, the archdiocese’s auxiliary bishops, and the archdiocese’s Presbyteral Council met to discuss the Commission’s recommendation. Based upon those discussions and prayerful consideration, Cardinal Cupich made the following decisions regarding the Deerfield/Lake Forest grouping.
No parish structural changes will occur at this time, however the archdiocesan Presbyteral Council will review the status of the grouping parishes on an annual basis. The Council expressed concerns about the sustainability of continuing as three parishes basedon Mass attendance relative to other archdiocesan parishes and future pastor availability. Bishop Grob, episcopal vicar of Vicariate I, and his team will continue to engage the parishes moving to the next phase of the renewal process and will report to the PresbyteralCouncil in spring 2024.
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Moving forward, continued work, especially in the area of evangelization and re-evangelization of parishioners, will be necessary to reground people in their discipleship. We know that only disciples can invite and inspire other disciples.
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Pope Francis calls us to not only be disciples of Jesus, but Missionary Disciples who share the Good News of Jesus in the world around us, a world yearning to hear and know Jesus.
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The Renew My Church imperative of making disciples will continue to be the mission into the decades to come.
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St. Mary School will continue in its current structure.
Next Steps
The parish communities will continue to the next phase of renewal, focusing on strong evangelization to the world around us. Specifically, with the support of the Parish Vitality Coordinator, Eleanor Segraves, and the Evangelization team of the Archdiocese, your parishes will continue to build the new reality, focused on deepening discipleship, and supporting disciples in becoming missionary disciples for the work of evangelization. The renewal process calls us to become a stronger, more sustainable presencefor the future, capable of reaching more people by sharing our discipleship in Jesus Christ, building communities with one another and inspiring witness in the world around us.
Office of the Archbishop 835
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archchicago.org
January 21, 2017
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
As a new year begins, I want to assure you of my prayers for you, your families, and your parish communities. I also want to share some important information about Renew My Church.
As you may already know, Renew My Church is an archdiocesan initiative that involves all the people of the archdiocese and their faith communities. The goal of Renew My Church is to make our parishes more vital and more sustainable. We do this not on ourown initiative but in response to the call of Christ, which was first heard by those disciples recounted in today’s gospel. The call is thesame as it was in those early days of the Church: to be His disciples and take responsibility for carrying on His mission in our time.The place to start is by working together to make our parishes vibrant communities that form missionary disciples of Jesus. This will also mean being realistic about our limited human and material resources and evaluating how our present structures may need to be organized differently to keep pace with changing realities.
A very important part of the process of Renew My Church are the parish groupings that will work to plan for the future anddiscern where God is leading us. After receiving consultation and feedback from you, the priests of the diocese, and parish pastoral councils, we are announcing the groupings today.
Your parish will be part of a grouping that will enable you to assess, plan, and discern how best to meet the needs of the future in a way that is both reasonable and in conformity with God’s will for us.
Each grouping will have guidance for its process of reflection and discernment. Everything, however, begins with buildingrelationships across parishes in a given grouping. That means getting to know each other and perhaps sharing some common projects or events, such as retreats, lectures, or community service for those in need. With future guidance and facilitation, this will develop in more specific planning and discernment directions. Today, your pastor will share a list of the parishes in your grouping.
Renew My Church will undoubtedly involve leaving behind familiar patterns and demand that we move outside our comfort zones. In a word, it will require sacrifice, but that has always been true for the Church whenever we have taken up new challenges. I am convinced that we are up to the task, and willing to do whatever it takes to build our capacity to pass on our faith to futuregenerations. That is what is at stake in the Renew My Church process. I encourage you to become involved and pray for its success.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich
Archbishop of Chicago