St. Mary Catholic Community in Appleton recently announced it will no longer share its mission with St. Joseph Parish, heading in its own direction instead.

For more than 30 years, St. Mary shared its religious formation with St. Joseph for the children who attend public schools, the Rev. Bill Swichtenberg said in the weekly church bulletin.

“As we move forward, we realize that the mission and vision of St. Joseph and St. Mary parishes are unique, as they should be,” Swichtenberg said. “Today, we have reached a juncture where the time is right for each parish to head in a different direction. Beginning this fall, we will provide faith formation to the parents and their children and teens of our parish family.”

Rev. Bill Swichtenberg | http://stmaryparish.org/

The Inter-Parish Religious Formation partnership is ending. St. Mary will work to connect with its 65 families to build relationships between parents and families, Swichtenberg wrote. The goal is to connect everyone more closely to the experience of Mass and Sabbath on Sunday.

A minister of Discipleship Formation to Parents and Their Children/Teens will be added to the St. Mary’s senior leadership team.

“This new person will be spirit-filled, dynamic, creative, imaginative and a person who thinks and feels outside of the box,” Swichtenberg wrote in the bulletin. “We are in need of a revitalization of faith formation so that it is more relevant in the lives of our families and transforms their hearts and their lives.”

Parish leadership groups have spent the past four years working on the purpose and identity of St. Mary Parish before concluding that the parish should make the weekend Mass gatherings life-transforming and affirming, Swichtenberg said.

“In addition, parish leaders have encouraged the senior leadership team to look at the way we do religious formation as St. Mary Parish,” Swichtenberg said in a Facebook post.

The leadership team in turn came to the realization that it was time to structure the parish’s own religious formation separate from St. Joseph Parish.