Q: Why does St. Joseph’s need a new Parish Center anyway?

A: If you examine the buildings on our campus, a Church, a Rectory, a School building and a Convent, you can see that it was designed so that the place could be run by 3 priests, a custodian and housekeeper, plus a principal with 12 nuns as teachers. That was the model of parish life at that time, and our buildings were constructed to facilitate that model.

Parish leadership models have evolved over the years, but the building remained the same. When the Sisters of St. Joseph’s left the convent building, we tried to adapt the building for offices, ministry to the homeless, and most importantly our Daycare. But these ministries really were trying to “make do” with existing structure. If you took a tour of the Daycare, you’ll see that it is not a building designed for daycare. It is obviously a Daycare making the best out of a convent. [Quite successfully, by the way.]

As new Parish Ministries developed, a place to office the staff had to be found. An office for the Faith Formation staff started out in the basement of the Rectory, moved for while to the south end of the convent building, until classrooms in the school opened up for them. [Even so, the Faith Formation Offices in the school have moved four times to different classrooms in order to make arrangements with the schools. Plus, the Faith Formation Offices are due to be squeezed out of the school building entirely within 2 years, as the Main Street School of Performing Arts continues to grow!]

Music and Liturgy staff were housed in the parish library. [The Library has since moved to the social hall.] The Parish Secretary and Administrator were officed in the rectory. The Pastoral Minister and Stewardship Director made their offices in the former live-in housekeeper’s apartment. Deacon Francis Tangney offices out of his home, but perhaps our next Deacon may not be able to do that. Our Youth Minister, Robyn Magalska Liebl [Did you know she was married last month?] currently has her office at St. John’s. It would be to our advantage to give her an office at St. Joseph’s, but there’s no room to even consider that at this time.

With our parish staff scattered all over our campus (and beyond), they have to jump hurdles to work together. It’s standard in most parishes to have centralized offices for the staff, with a common phone system, receptionist, office machine room, and networked computers. We don’t have any of those. The two possibilities we are studying are 1) Renovating the convent building, or 2) Demolishing the convent and building a new parish center. Feasibility studies and cost analyses are still being conducted.

We welcome any input, suggestions or questions as we try to come up with a workable plan.