February 16, 2025

Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Forever ~

As part of the multiyear process of reorganizing the Church in Western Washington, each parish family needs to create a regional pastoral council called a Parish Family Advisory Council. Once we get it up and going, we’ll formally call it Columbia River Catholic Pastoral Council, and informally, the Pastoral Council (simple enough).

What is a Pastoral Council? What does it do? How does membership work? How often does it meet? Those are great questions, yet amazingly enough the Church does not answer them. Speaking for myself, I have always used them to assist me in evangelizing and sanctifying the parish I pastor. The regional pastoral council that we will be forming will help me do that too and be co-responsible for this parish family’s implementation of Partners in the Gospel, the Archdiocese of Seattle’s plan to reorganize ministry in Western Washington.

The three communities that make up Columbia River Catholic Parish Family (Holy Redeemer, St. Thomas, and Star of the Sea), currently have autonomous Pastoral Councils. The new regional Pastoral Council will become the one pastoral council for both Holy Redeemer and St. Thomas, having five members from each parish on it, as well as two members from Star of the Sea.

Star of the Sea Mission in Stevenson is a little different. Star of the Sea is too small to have more than one part-time staff position. Therefore, their Pastoral Council is also a working group that both identifies and discerns community issues, and then organizes themselves and others to do whatever work needs to be done. For these reasons, Star of the Sea will continue to have their own Pastoral Council while having a couple of representatives on the regional Pastoral Council.

So, I’m looking for parishioners who would be willing to be part of Columbia River Catholic’s Pastoral Council. This would be a three-year commitment to the summer of 2028. We will calendar monthly meetings although we wouldn’t meet every month. This is going to be a working group where there will be work to do beyond attending meetings. I anticipate that most of one’s time on the Pastoral Council will be dealing with Partners in the Gospel. This is not for those who want to advocate for their existing parish. The point of Partners in the Gospel is to move our three communities into one canonical parish. Here are attachments to help you discern if you or someone you know might be a good fit for our regional pastoral council www.archseattle.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Consultative-Bodies-for-Web-min.pdf and www.archseattle.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Introduction-min-1.pdf.

If you would like to nominate yourself or someone else to be on the pastoral council, please email our Parish Manager, Don Anderson, at dona@holyredeemervanc.org. By early March we will begin calling people and by late March or April we will meet for the first time. Thank you for your generosity.

May Almighty God Bless You,