The future is bright at St. John’s! The Holy Spirit is working among His people and we believe great things are in store for our parish this year and beyond!

The Holy Spirit prompts all of us to a deeper relationship with God. There are two primary ways for this deepening to occur: prayer and the Sacraments. Prayer of course is that intimate one on one time with our Lord that we all need. The Sacraments likewise are those physical encounters with His grace, mercy and love, which has the power to transform our lives. As a parish, we believe the Holy Spirit is calling us to devote our time and energy to prayer. Starting September 8 and lasting until June 2019, the parish of St. John the Evangelist in Goshen, Indiana will be participating in a Year of Prayer.

This Year of Prayer will be the driving force for the renewal of our parish. Much is planned for the upcoming year. Three main initiatives will occur during this year of Prayer to help us all grow in our relationship with God.

The first initiative is called “The First Fifteen” campaign. This campaign focuses on growing prayer within our leadership groups at St. John’s. Each group is asked to commit the first Fifteen minutes of their meeting to prayer. This isn’t just a simple opening prayer led by one person in the group, this is active prayer by each participant for fifteen minutes at the start of the meeting. This is a Church, focused on Christ, and opening our meetings in prayer will help keep the focus where it needs to be, Christ.

The second initiative is events organized by the parish on prayer. We have two sets of events. The first are the Mornings of Recollections. We will host four Saturday mornings throughout the year focusing on prayer. We have a Men’s Morning on Saturday September 8 and a Women’s Morning on Saturday December 1. Two more occur on March 16 and June 8 in 2019. These will be great ways to come together in fellowship and also have time to learn and experience prayer. You won’t want to miss it!

Secondly, during the season of Lent we will host the 1% campaign. This encourages every parishioner to offer 15 minutes of prayer every day during Lent. This will be hard, as time for all of us is busy, but we can do it! We can all make time for prayer if we develop a plan and implement it. Father Royce will dedicate all of his homilies to the topic of prayer, introducing various prayer methods for us to try. Our 2nd Lenten Series will focus exclusively on the Lectio Divina, the method of conversing with God through the Bible.

The third initiative is the development of our Intercessory Prayer Team. There are big plans for the parish not only this year, but beyond. Behind every good effort of renewal is a faithful team praying for the parish. They will be praying for the protection of the leadership of our parish. They will be praying for all the events and initiatives being implemented in the parish. They are taking up there roles as spiritual warriors. We invite anyone who is interested to come and join us. The more warriors, the better.

This year is going to be amazing! We invite you to participate to the fullest extent that you can, it will not only make a huge impact in your own individual life, but it will trickle over into the parish as a whole.

In Christ’s Joy,

Attila Valentiny