The Parish Leadership Team was formed about 12 years ago with the directive from the Pastor to discern the identity of the parish at that time (mission), develop a vision for the future that aligned with the diocese and the Church, and establish plans to help direct the parish in achieving that vision. And over the past 10 years we were successful in our directives, with the assistance of the parish family and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
In 2023, the PLT was updated to include more members of the parish’s diverse ministries. Since we were a new team, it was decided that we should also take the opportunity to re-evaluate our mission, vision and plan. From this period of re-evaluation, we concluded that the original mission and vision and plan had mostly been completed, and, that we were certainly a more evolved and involved parish than in 2012. We had grown in love of each other and more in love with Christ.
From our meetings and time of prayer, we offer our beloved parish family our new mission statement, that I personally believe accurately reflects who we are today:
The Family of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church trusts in God’s Divine Love under the guidance of the
Rosminian Tradition of Universal Charity
That statement led us to answer the question, what do we do with our special charisms and what do we want the our future to look like. We developed this vision statement as our answer, that I believe that to be an achievable but lofty goal for our parish family:
To spread Jesus’ Eucharistic Love throughout the greater Seminole area by bringing lifelong disciples into his church through acts of charity, fellowship, and prayer.
We spent a lot of time discussing and debating different ways for us to achieve this vision. And we decided finally that we already had the answer. Our way forward, our means to accomplish our vision, was written in the Gospels, specifically in John 13:34:
“Love one another”
My brothers and sisters, love will lead us to spread the message of Jesus to others both inside our parish grounds and in our community.
