December 7, 2002

The Feast of St. Ambrose

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ the King,

May the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus be with you. As we recently celebrated our great patronal feast day: the Solemnity of Christ the King, we have much to be profoundly grateful for. The Lord Jesus has blessed us so much that it is almost easy to take our riches for granted, surrounded as we are by so much abundance. Of course, the greatest gift of all that He has given us is the gift of Himself, profoundly present in our midst—as we gather in His Name, listen to His Word, receive His very Body and Blood, adore before His Real Presence, and use His many gifts to build His Kingdom. He has filled us with His Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, Who guides and directs our lives.

We have this beautiful Church to worship Him in, and the freedom to do so. We have a wonderful complement of brothers and sisters here to encourage us to truly live for God: individually, as families, and as a parish. His many gifts are truly without number. What does He ask us in return? It is a simple exchange: He gives us everything; we give everything back to Him. All that we have is gift, St. Paul reminds us, and that gift has one purpose, to build the Kingdom. I see many wonderful ways in which the Kingdom is being dynamically built here at Christ the King—folks responding to the gentle urges of the Spirit, as He guides us and directs us. We have been blessed with an abundance of new members, essentially doubling in size since we began our building project several years ago. We have now reached a size where we need to take a more careful and systematic look at how we as a parish respond to all the gifts the Lord Jesus has given to us.

To this end, this January we will be implementing at Christ the King an excellent program developed by the United States Catholic Conference and the Diocese of Lansing called the Diocesan Stewardship Initiative. It is a comprehensive plan that invites parishes and the individuals that make them up to see their time, treasure, and talents, as gifts from God for the building of His Kingdom and invites them to explore more fully just how the Lord Jesus would have us use those gifts for His glory. It is a comprehensive look at how we build the Kingdom. It includes a special look at how we use our most cherished possession, our time, to cooperate with what the Lord Jesus is doing in our midst.

We have many people in Christ the King who have received excellent teaching on this in the past, including teaching on tithing, sharing gifts and talents and how to use our time wisely so that God would truly be served by what we do. However, with almost half the parish being new, I feel it is important to do some more comprehensive teaching on this, so that we are all ‘on the same page,’ as it were. It is important that the Parish as a whole experience the vision of what the Lord Jesus has for us. The Diocesan Stewardship Initiative is an excellent tool to help bring this about.

Its implementation is also very timely. As those of you who read the bulletin carefully have no doubt noted, we have been below our budgeted income almost every Sunday since the fiscal year started in July. We are as of last Sunday almost $17,000 below what we anticipated in income for this point in the year. This has resulted in us needing to cut back on expenses. It has also resulted in our not being able to assist several projects that ordinarily receive more support from us, for example, we had anticipated giving the Huron Valley Catholic School building project a gift consistent with our practice of supporting Catholic education, which we are unable to do at present. We also have not been able to give Hope Clinic the level of support that we have in the past. This excellent clinic has been forced to cut back on some of its services, services the poor in our area desperately need, due to shortfalls in its budgeted income as well.

At the same time, our parish folks have been incredibly generous in other ways, e.g. exceeding our DSA goal by over $10,000 was no doubt a great comfort to our Bishop, during the dark days he faces over the crisis facing the Church. Also, the stupendous response folks made to our visiting missionary a few weeks ago, raising over $25,000, will do great service for the Kingdom in the impoverished area that he serves. It is my hope that as we grow in our catechesis through the Diocesan Stewardship Initiative, this will result in the giving to Christ the King itself increasing so that we are able to make our budget. In the meantime, I would invite people to consider the possibility of increasing their giving to the Parish. We have many people out of work at this time, and at the same time increasing expenses, e.g. our school subsidy budget was exceeded by the need in both grade and high school.

The Lord Jesus has always richly blessed us in our need. I have no doubt that as we continue to seek His guidance, He will continue to do so. My profound gratitude to all who do so much to build His Kingdom in our midst.

I commend you all to the care of the Mother of God, the protection of St. Michael, and the intercession of St. Joseph.

Your brother in the service of Christ the King,

Fr. Ed Fride, Pastor

Christ the King Catholic Church