From our Pastor, Fr. Chas Canoy…
Dear Parish Family,
As the pastor of St. John, my primary responsibility is to help you grow as disciples of Jesus and to equip you to go and make disciples of others. Critical to that duty is hearing from you about your needs! To that end, I am excited to share with you that our parish is going to participate in a parish survey conducted by Catholic Leadership Institute (CLI). Thanks to a grant from the Lilly Foundation, we are able to take part in this diocesan-wide initiative without cost to our parish.
The Disciple Maker Index (DMI) Survey will allow parishioners to reflect on their own spiritual development, and the results will help us identify the ways in which the parish can better support further growth in your relationship with God. Your input will be compiled with all the other surveys to provide a picture of our parish family that will help identify both our strengths and ways to be better in serving you.
At the completion of the survey, our parish will receive an aggregate report of the results from CLI. The parish will NOT have access to individual survey responses. This survey offers us a unique and important opportunity to learn about issues of importance to individuals and families in our parish in a confidential and professional way. We will use these results to:
1) enhance parish life based on your feedback, 2) look at more effective opportunities to support you in discipleship and in meeting the challenges of life, and 3) create goals and action plans to help achieve that personal growth in our parishioners.
The window to complete the survey is only three weeks long from February 8 to March 1.
UPDATE – the survey is now open (ahead of its published start date of 2/8). Click here to submit your responses…We’re hoping for many to provide us with feedback. Thank You!
The web-based survey can be filled out either online or in paper form. Because of this short window, I encourage you not only to fill it out as soon as you can, but also to stress the importance of responding to this survey to your fellow parishioners, particularly the people with whom you participate in a parish ministry.
Soon, you will have the opportunity to participate in the survey via an online link or in paper form. If parishioners ask you about the survey, please:
- Remind them about the dates the survey will be live between now and March 1.
- Encourage them to respond as soon as they can. We want to hear from as many people as possible.
- Assure them of the confidentiality that our parish will NOT have access to individual survey responses. Our parish leadership will receive a summary report of the aggregate data that will inform the direction we take as a parish family.
Thank you in advance for the encouragement that you will provide! Meanwhile, if you have any questions or ideas about good ways to boost the response rate, please feel free to approach me or our Director of Parish Life, Shayne Slough, at the parish office or at shayne@saintjohnjackson.org.
Grateful for your help with this,
Fr. Chas Canoy
Parishioner Information Update…
Please note that in order to get this survey into as many hands as possible, we would like to verify that we have your most up-to-date email address.
Additionally, if you are married, both you and your spouse can complete a survey. In many instances, our database lists only one email per family.
Please help us by using the form on page 3 in our bulletin or one of the update cards in the pews to provide us with your email information. As always, we only use your email details for our parish/diocesan communication via our weekly email blast or for personal communication with you.
Update cards can be placed in the collection basket this weekend (preferred)or next, or you can drop it by the parish office during the week.
As Fr. Chas mentioned, your participation in the survey is very much appreciated and helps guide our future parish efforts! Thank you!!