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All Are Welcome: A Hospitable Community that Forms Loving Disciples to Transform the World

Our proposal is to focus on our Hospitality Ministry, which comprises some

150 committed members assigned to teams that serve all our liturgies. Worship at

St. Monica is central to our life of faith; critical to the evangelizing nature of our

worship is the attention given to music. Each of our weekend liturgies has its own

choir director who chooses music according to the “feel” and “tone” of that

particular assembly. Musical styles range from Gregorian chant and renaissance

polyphony to contemporary Catholic compositions and praise and worship. It might

be said that our Hospitality Ministry welcomes people at the doors; our Music

Ministry engages the assembly and keeps people coming back; our preaching feeds

the soul and inspires us to transform our world as disciples.

The outreach and pastoral care ministries (encompassing peace and justice work) of

St. Monica seek through education and advocacy to transform ourselves and those

we serve by responding to Christ in everyone. Many of our outreach and pastoral

care ministries (both local and global) have arisen out of the liturgical experience of

our vibrant Sunday worship; in November of each year, for example, we host a

special liturgy in the park across the street from our church to honor the homeless

who have died in the past year.

Our project involves deepening our own ministry of hospitality, and learning ways

in which we can share this important work with the wider community. Specifically,

we hope to:

• Build and strengthen the presentation about hospitality that our ministry

coordinators have developed.

• Host ministry forums to share our story with other Roman Catholic churches,

ecumenical partners in our neighborhood and city, and our interfaith

neighbors.

• Write a series of articles for publications or a “how to” book.

Respond to the demand we frequently receive for speakers about the

ministry.

• Identify and work together on strategically tackling problems of injustice in

our community to fulfill our mission to transform the world

• Develop a culture to speak with decision makers locally and globally to speak

to injustice.

Yale Institute of Sacred Music
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409 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511
Tel: 203-432-3187 Fax: 203-432-5296

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