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New youth minister Andy Krueger stands alongside Sharon Baker, religious
education
coordinator and new pastoral associate for St. Mary’s Parish. |
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St. Mary’s Parish
“Movin’ and Shakin’”
New parish offices and ministers bring exciting
changes
St. Mary’s Parish has been a busy place over this past year. With the
retirement of Father LeRoy Smet in 2007, Sr. Pam Biehl and the church
trustees have been considering a number of positive changes – the first
being new office space for church staff. “They’d been in the basement
for so long,” said Sr. Pam. “Everybody deserves a nice office and a
comfortable place to greet people. There was just no room down there for
any of that.”
The solution? With the rectory vacated, the building and grounds crew
and a slew of volunteers took to the job of creating a totally new
office/gathering space out of the small house on Pleasant Drive. “It’s
been truly amazing to see the volunteerism of this parish,” said Sr.
Pam. “Nearly every bit of labor that has gone into this project was
completely donated and the materials have been provided at a huge
savings. Gary Gardner, our maintenance man, has been absolutely
amazing.” The entire project has cost the church roughly $10,000.
The new offices look (and smell!) like an entirely new facility. The
home has been modified to accommodate a spacious conference room and a
large outer office, in addition to an office for Sr. Pam, religious
education coordinator and pastoral associate Sharon Baker and newly
hired Youth Minister Andy Krueger. “Moving out of the church basement
has also opened up another classroom for our religious ed. programs,”
said Sr. Pam, “and provided a common office space when we are busy down
there.” Sr. Pam also shared the Knights of Columbus will soon be
re-roofing the new parish offices and painting the building in advance
of the cold weather.
St. Mary’s is also lucky to have new youth minister Andy Krueger, who
will focus on total youth ministry and catechesis for grades 6-12,
allowing religious education coordinator Sharon Baker to better serve
the parish by taking on some pastoral associate duties. “These are all
really positive changes for our church,” said Sr. Pam, who calculates
nearly 40 new families have joined the parish in the last year.
“Sharon will soon be offering Liturgy of the Word on Friday mornings,
in addition to doing a number of other critical things for our parish
like visiting our homebound parishioners, representing our parish on
committees I cannot get to and the like.”
The church invites the entire community to come and see the new
office space before and after mass on Saturday, Oct. 11 for a casual
Open House. “But really, I encourage folks to come by any time between 8
a.m. and 5 p.m. to see us,” she said. “Remember…it’s small! We want
people to be comfortable as they try to get a good look around.”
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The new St. Mary’s Parish offices. The space for many years was the
parish rectory
where Father LeRoy Smet lived. -News photos |
