As pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows, my primary responsibility is to help you grow as disciples of Jesus and to equip you to go and make disciples of others.  I am excited to share with you that our parish is going to participate in a parish survey conducted by Catholic Leadership Institute.  The Disciple Maker Index (DMI) Survey allows parishioners to reflect on their own spiritual growth and discipleship and identify the ways in which the parish effectively supports that growth.

The web-based survey will be accessible online and in paper form from January 14, 2023 to February 12, 2023. Instructions for picking up and submitted Paper Surveys, will be communicated to parishioners. If you have an opportunity, please stress the importance of responding to this survey to your ministry members.  

At the completion of the survey, our parish will receive an aggregate report of the results.  We will NOT have access to individual survey responses.  This survey offers us a unique and important opportunity to learn about issues of importance to families in a confidential and professional way.  We will use these results to 1) look at opportunities to support parishioner growth in discipleship and 2) create goals and action plans to achieve that growth.

Soon, you will receive a communication from us inviting them to participate in the survey.  If parishioners ask you about the survey, please:

• Remind them about the dates the survey will be live January 14-February 12.
• Encourage them to respond as soon they can. We want to hear from as many people as possible
• Assure them that the parish leadership will receive a summary report of the aggregate data and that no one at our parish will have access to individual survey responses.

Thank you in advance for the encouragement that you will provide to the community when we solicit feedback.  Meanwhile, if you have any questions or ideas about good ways to boost the response rate, please feel free to approach me directly.

Thank you for your help with this!
Fr. Jacob Koether