By Renee Riehl

I am sure St. Mary’s Parish in Columbus resembles a lot of rural parishes in the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings. We were a small and struggling parish, questioning how to grow, wondering not only how do we fulfill the needs of the parishioners we have, but how do we get back those parishioners who have fallen away? How do we get the young families excited and involved?

We are extremely lucky to have one of the many wonderful priests in our Diocese, Father Greg Staudinger. His great stewardship ideas were a great starting point. We implemented small faith study groups during Lent using the program, Living the Eucharist, and continued that program for three years. With the help of Catholic Extension (through the diocesan Office of Stewardship), we hired a part time Director of Religious Education. In the first year we increased our RE program from 2 kids to 20.

That was a good start, but participation remained low. We realized that we needed to shift our focus from the weekly collection to fulfilling the needs of our parishioners and become better disciples of Christ. If we worked on that, the rest would follow. We understood that we had to be open to change, and that isn’t easy.

With the continued support and leadership of Father Greg, and encouragement from Judy Held in the Stewardship Office, we have been working hard for the last year and a half. To date, we have increased our parish from 75 to 140 families. We have gone from a part-time Director of Religious Education to fulltime with 49 kids enrolled last year. We have 4 adult faith sharing groups that meet regularly with two more during Lent. We have a very active group of young families. It has been a wonderful transformation in the lives of our parishioners. It feels like a family. People stay to visit after Mass, our ministry participation has doubled, and young and old are involved in each other’s lives outside of Mass.

Here are a couple quotes from our parishioners:

Being new parishioners, St. Mary’s made our family feel welcome. They included us at every opportunity, and gave us the opportunity to serve in many ways. They have fed us spiritually, and we feel we can share our faith journey together with our parish family.
From the O’Connor family Jason, Mandy, Katie, Gavin & Anna

The remarkable thing about Stewardship is that it’s contagious. Every level of our Parish has active involvement from religious education to church and lawn maintenance. If you want to see it in action,; attend our annual St. Mary’s Harvest Dinner. Parishioners from eight to eighty all work together in a one-day fund-raising effort driven by the Holy Spirit enhancing our Faith Community and ensuring a positive future for our Church.
From John Patterson, Finance Council Chair and longtime parishioner

Parishes in our diocese are already starting to use these wonderful resources, and not just small ones like St. Mary’s. If you would like to learn more about the questions we asked and answered, and the programs we put in place, please call the Office of Stewardship at 406-727-6683. It was the best call we made.

Contact Us

Do you Have a Story Idea or Information for the Harvest? Let Us Know.

Not readable? Change text. captcha txt