Sigh...

This weekend we had a parish ministry fair to try to promote our groups and drum up some new volunteers. Given that I gave up a day off for the event, I was really disappointed by the results. I had less than five interested people come to talk to me over the course of the weekend. We had maybe 80-90 people walk through the event in total for the weekend, and three out of five Masses had one visitor or less come through. Our biggest Mass produced not one, single, solitary visitor despite the fact that it was announced during the Mass to attend. I also had seven groups who committed to participate and then didn't bother to show up. I fielded more questions about one of the meditation groups than I did for my own three ministries.

So frustrating. I know now not to bother putting all of my energy behind that complete waste of time.

One quasi-good thing happened this weekend. After months of me trying to get the Fathers on board to make one of our masses more child-friendly, a comment at the most recent Pastoral Bored Committee finally provoked the pastor to do something about it. He called all of the children up to say the Lord's Prayer together with him, and he sat on the steps with them as they recited it together.

It was beautiful. It almost brought a tear to my eye.

Only, then, I think, Father didn't know what to do with them. Instead of telling them to go wish their families peace at the Sign of Peace, he shook a couple of their hands and abandoned them to sit there, not knowing what to do next. He walked back to the altar, distributed communion to the ministers, and finally came back up behind them, still sitting on the steps, and said, "Go back to your families." Awkward...! I'm going to reinforce the suggestion of the Sign of Peace dismissal and hopefully keep the trend alive, because the children really enjoyed their moment on the altar, and I know the parents loved it too.