The Community Life and Ministry committee includes welcoming, ministries, and communication activities.

The Welcoming aspect, as you might guess, has a primary goal of welcoming new parishioners to our Church. This is probably the best part of the whole job. It is so much fun to meet a new person, couple or family who is looking for a great place to worship and to know that this is where they have been led by the grace of God.

To already know what a wonderful place Holy Cross is and to be able to share that with someone else is very rewarding. The members of the committee thoroughly enjoy greeting the new members about every other month on the third Sunday. We all gather before mass to meet each individual and to make them feel as welcome as we were made to feel when we each joined the parish. After they are welcomed by the community during mass, they are invited to coffee and donuts in the Reilly Center to meet more parishioners. It is often their first interaction with our community, and so many have commented to us about how unique it is to be recognized and welcomed so warmly.

The Welcoming group is also a hospitality group of sorts. We have led several functions in the Reilly Center, and we all can agree how much fun it is to work together, to see something through, and to reap the benefits. One of the first major accomplishments of the group was to plan a recognition program of long-standing members of our parish. We had over 100 people honored. It was such a rewarding experience to see where our church was built from and to see how much it meant to so many people. The fact that so many of those founding members are with us still is a testament to how strong our Holy Cross Family really is.

A second event was one of great excitement! We welcomed Father Scott Detisch to our family!

Some of the other goals we have for welcoming include creating more opportunities for intergenerational contact. One way we hope to do this is to recruit some of our young people to assist as door greeters and ushers. We would also like to work on a family service project that would hopefully become a traditional event in our parish life.

We hope this may shed a little bit of light on what occurs to make our parish family feel welcomed and a part of our Holy Cross Family. We are always looking for fresh ideas and anybody is "welcome" to join at any time. Please contact the church office for more information.

Holy Cross offers a variety of Ministry opportunities through our Hands of Christ Outreach programs. Please contact the office at (814) 474-2605 for current information, or to make a prayer chain request.