Community Update

August 25, 2024

Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Forever ~

This pastor’s column is an update on where things stand for the three communities that share me as their pastor: Holy Redeemer Parish (HR), St. Thomas Aquinas Parish (STA), and Our Lady Star of the Sea Mission (Star).

As of July 1st, we entered phase #1 of the Archdiocesan plan to reorganize. What that amounts to at this point for us is sharing our priests (pastor and vicar) and staff. I do not know what the future holds. I was told that the next phase (phase #2) will be shown to the priests and staff in September. Whatever is in that phase would be worked on over a one-to-three-year period of time.

For now, because of our partnering and future together, there has been significant restructuring of the staff between HR and STA. This was much simpler to do than most clusters of parishes in the Archdiocese of Seattle. Because we only had one administrator between the two parishes, Don Anderson, and because he was capable and willing to administer all three communities, we were able to reorganize our staff into a regional staff much quicker and smoothly than most. At the end of this pastor’s column is an organizational chart of our current staff configuration. It shows all employees of the three communities and their job titles. You will see on our organizational chart that some of our staff have new job titles that more accurately reflect their responsibilities. Some of the staff are truly regional in their focus and presence, some are regional but focused more on one community than another, while some are exclusively focused on one community. Some of the staff are full-time, and some are part-time from 5-30 hours a week. Over the coming year, we will get all of this on our website as well as what each is responsible for, and even photos of the staff.

Fr. Dominic, the priest who has been helping out mostly at STA will be leaving us for Malawi Africa on Monday, September 2. Our “permanent” vicar, Fr. Bala, has been delayed at least a month, yet we are hopeful that he will arrive sometime in October. By the grace of God, we have all our Masses covered for our communities for the month of September. The Holy Cross Fathers from the University of Portland, continue to travel to Star of the Sea most Sundays for Mass, as they have been doing for 60 years now. We cannot thank them enough.

Last week Holy Redeemer bought a new rectory (priest residence). It is a house located at 16915 NE 11th St., Vancouver, adjacent to Holy Redeemer’s campus. You can look it up on a GPS map. As per Archdiocesan regulations, we needed to have a house that could accommodate at least two priests. Our two rectories, one at HR and the other at STA, don’t quite meet Archdiocesan requirements, which are that each priest has a bedroom, full bathroom, and a sitting room. That means that a rectory has to have at least four enclosed rooms and two full bathrooms. This house has that, and the location cannot be beat. The transaction cost us $600,000 and had the full approval of the pastoral and finance councils as well as various offices of the Archdiocese and the Archbishop himself. We fortunately had the money in savings. I am not sure when I will move into it. As long as STA has scheduled Masses, I think it best to have a priest there on-site. So, if we continue to have two assigned priests for our three communities, and STA continues to have scheduled Masses, then I do not envision moving into the new rectory until one of those two things changes. Until then, I will continue to live in the same rectory I have been living in, and the new rectory might be used for additional meeting space or perhaps we will rent it out. Because of its proximity to the campus, a simple walkway can be made from our parking lot to its back fence. A big thank you to parishioner Denny Miller at Zenith Properties who managed this transaction for us (fee free again, saving us a lot of money!).

That’s it for now. Be sure to check out the staff organizational chart below.

May Almighty God Bless You,