Student Participation in Mass

The Education/Faith Formation Board is working in conjunction with the Parish Staff to get children more involved in the 10am Mass on Sunday mornings. We are planning to have specific groups of students greet people at all of the entrances to the church and bring up the gifts during the offertory. As the program evolves, we would like to see the junior high students doing the readings, petitions and possibly distributing communion.

The opening of the new gathering space is an opportune time to start this new program. The schedule, set to begin in January, is attached. We have assigned different groups of students throughout the rest of the school year. In addition to grouping kids by homeroom, we used school clubs, sports teams, student council and youth group. Since we have such a large pool of students to pull from, this opportunity to participate in Mass will only happen once or twice during the school year. The students will also receive service hours for their participation.

There will be five entrances to the church with the completion of the gathering space and we should have at least two children at each door. We also need four children to bring up the gifts at offertory. That means, at a minimum, we need 14 students each week to participate at 10am Mass. We are hoping to mention the student groups in the bulletin each week so the congregation will know what we are doing and who they are seeing as they come in to church.

This program is a great way to get more children involved in Mass at a young age. That involvement will hopefully help them feel even more a part of the weekly liturgy. In order for this program to be successful, we need your support with the students. We must communicate how important it is to participate in Mass each week.  The program is voluntary and each of the defined groups contains more than enough students each week.