Growing Disciples

What is Growing Disciples?

Growing Disciples is a pastoral planning process for the Catholic Diocese of Peoria to renew discipleship and enhance relationships with Jesus Christ in every corner of our region. The pastoral planning process will examine the current structure of parishes and schools in the diocese to evaluate how they can best meet the needs of the faithful and address challenges facing the Church today.

Specifically, Growing Disciples has three primary goals:

• Enabling the faithful to go make disciples within a mission-driven, sustainable structure of parishes and schools.
• Enhancing the vibrancy of our parishes, schools, and ministries.
• Increasing our support of the happiness, health, and holiness of our priests.

Father and appointed Key Parish Leaders met with representatives of the Growing Disciples group in April to review and discuss the preliminary proposals for our parish.  This information has been posted to the parish Facebook page and website. As you review the information, please keep in mind, at this time, these are preliminary proposals. No decisions have yet been made. Please note as well, that the Core Team of the program made a serious error in dividing Fr. Pat’s pastorate of Tolono & Ivesdale into two different planning proposals.  They said that they would rectify this error.

Three options were presented for our parish, and feedback was collected for each option. Parish feedback will be reviewed by the Growing Disciples Core Team and a second round of parish models will be developed over the summer, and critiqued in the autumn by the priests at their Priests’ Assembly Day.

The second round of parish models will be presented in the fall and a meeting will be scheduled to obtain feedback from parishioners. This feedback will be gathered and presented to the Growing Disciples Core Team who will then develop a final set of parish models for review by priests and the Pastoral Planning Commission. The final recommendations will be presented to Bishop Tylka and an announcement is anticipated in Spring 2024.

The Key Parish Leaders had lots of questions regarding the current models. We do not have answers to questions about which buildings, if any, may close, or what mass times may be under the proposed models. Again, at this time, these are merely suggestions, and an opportunity will be available in the fall to provide feedback once the second round of models have been developed. We wanted to be transparent and share the information that we have at this time.

If you have feedback at this time, you can email:  ifpdems@gmail.com . Please use “Growing Disciples” as the subject, and the Key Parish Leaders will review and forward on to the Growing Disciples Core Team if there are issues, we did not consider with the proposals.

A copy of the Growing Disciples Planning Area Models packet is available to look at in the vestibules of the church.  Please keep it there so that everyone may have a chance to read through it.

Father Pat

Key Parish Leaders:

• Deacon Jim
• Nate Baxley
• Jim Harrington
• Tonya Flavin
• Mary Johnson

Document coming soon.