Senior Warden Report

Hello everyone! I am pleased and honored to serve as your Senior Warden for this year. I am very excited to be a part of the cathedral family and the Chapter!

The Chapter met recently on a Saturday morning to have a strategic planning session. We talked about where St. Paul’s is today and what we would hope to see happen in the future. Most importantly, we discussed how to make our goals happen.

Before we met, each Chapter member was asked to answer a few questions. Based on the responses, we discussed each question in more detail at our meeting. Here are some of the results:

1. What do you value most about St. Paul's Cathedral?

• History and beauty of the Cathedral and our downtown, central location

• Friendships/Family Feeling

• Our Community Outreach

• The Episcopal Church Liturgy

• Mouse Factory

2. What are your hopes for St. Paul's Cathedral?

• Increase Membership

• Have Financial Stability

3. When you consider where you want the Cathedral to be in 5 years, what challenges and opportunities, and also what barriers and obstacles do you see?

• Challenges:

• Fundraising/Financials

• Decline in Attendance

• Community/Society’s mindset regarding church

• Educating Parishioners on how to talk about St. Paul’s to others

• Unwillingness to Change

• Opportunities:

• We have a core group of believers

• Well known in the community

Due to the current financial stresses of the Cathedral, we saw a common thread in the responses. We need to grow the membership in order to address the financial issues. The Chapter does not want to simply discuss these problems, we want to take action to address them. So the following committees were established.

Outreach Committee: Terry Becker

The outreach committee will be looking at our current outreach programs and determining how we can learn more about each one and seeing if there are ways to get information about the Cathedral out to people who participate in those programs.

Marketing Committee: Terry Becker, Dcn. Mike, Heidi Brokl

The marketing committee will be looking at how to get the word out about St. Paul’s to help draw more members to the church. This may involve advertising, reaching out to the many colleges and universities in the area and promoting the Sunday School program.

Sunshine Committee: Linda Pierce, Claire Hutter, Debbie Hackbarth

The sunshine committee will be looking at current members to see how we can do more to reach out to each other.

Fundraising Committee: Helen Carew, Mary Nick, Cris Bean

The fundraising committee will be evaluating our current fundraising efforts to determine those that give us the best results with the least effort. They will also be considering other fundraising opportunities that we may not have done in the past.

Worship Committee: Fr. Brian, Dcn. Mike

The worship committee will be talking about ways to continue working on and growing our ecumenical efforts with other parishes in Fond du Lac. They will also be talking about having an instructional eucharist to help us all learn about the items used during services and why we do what we do.

The people listed for each committee are not the entire committee. We are asking each of you to help in some way. Please contact one of the chapter members listed to find out how you can get involved in a committee you have an interest in. We NEED your ideas and WELCOME them!

When times are tough it can be very easy to turn to complaining and assuming that nothing can be done to fix them. Yes, things are tough. Yes, we need more members. Yes, we need more money. As your Senior Warden, I want to assure you that I am here if you’d ever like to talk. If something is wrong, please consider potential solutions to the problem so that our chat can be as productive as possible.

I am excited and enthusiastic about St. Paul’s and I hope you are too!

God’s Blessings,

Heidi Brokl