​This year has forced us to reimagine almost everything our church does, from worship to prayer to community and more. While this has brought about significant challenges, it has also brought about great opportunities to bring new life to our standard ways of being. As we approach Advent and Christmas this year, we’re faced with the same reality: great challenge to our normal practices during these seasons, and great opportunities too. 

Christmas will look very different this year than in years past. Normally we welcome more than 1500 people to our two campuses at 4:00pm for Christmas Eve Masses. Obviously we can’t gather in anything close to those numbers this year. In considering the possibility of any in-person Masses this Christmas, the challenges are significant: singing is prohibited, capacity is significantly reduced, and people have to register in advance (on a day when the majority of people who attend Mass aren’t regularly connected with the church at all). All together, these restrictions create a sense of exclusion, so contrary to the spirit of Christmas and contrary to our mission as a faith community. In addition, holding multiple in-person gatherings in the midst of a worsening pandemic raises significant public health concerns.

Given this, and considering that the overwhelming majority of our community has chosen to worship online instead of in-person during this time, we’ve made the decision to host our Christmas Masses online only this year. We’ll have 2 online Christmas Eve Masses, both at 4:00pm, one from St. Joseph and one from St. Luke. Both Masses will be available to view on demand at any other time after they’ve been broadcast, either later on Christmas Eve or anytime on Christmas Day.

This is a challenge to be sure--we’d all love to be together in person for Christmas--but it also represents a great opportunity. Since we’ll be online, our capacity is unlimited and we can fully welcome everyone to join in. Our virtual doors will be wide open! Families will be able to worship together in our online campus, even if they are separated by a great distance this Christmas. We’ll have easy and fun ways to help you invite friends and neighbors to join us online this Christmas.

We’re also preparing Christmas Eve Kits, to help us feel more connected in our worship together. The kits will contain candles to light as we worship together, Christmas activities for your kids, and some other fun surprises. You can reserve your Christmas Eve Kit here and it can be picked up on the weekend of December 19/20.

Even though we’ll be worshipping from home this year, we’re committed to making this Christmas a wonderful and meaningful celebration. We hope and expect that Christmas next year will look very different from this year; but above all, we place our hope in the joy of Emmanuel, God with us, no matter where we are.

Hi New Roads,

We’re looking forward to worshipping together (online) this weekend!

• We’ll be joining the Church of the Nativity at 10:45am tomorrow. Use this link to join: https://live.churchnativity.com/ Or join via Facebook Live. (Be sure to say hi using the chat feature!)
• The Saturday Vigil Mass will be live-streamed from St. Luke’s at 4:00pm today (and available to view on demand anytime after that!) at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW4aRmRSMmM&feature=youtu.be

No matter how you join in worship this weekend, take a photo of yourself, or your family, or your setup joining in worship this weekend. Send the photo to us or tag us on social media and we’ll share the photos to help us all feel more connected. And finally, invite a friend! Forward this email to friends or family members or post the link on your social media to invite everyone to join us for worship online this weekend.

See you online!

Love,
The New Roads Team

Connect with us online:
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Hi Friends,

We wanted to reach out with an update on things going on at New Roads these days.

Both churches remain closed until further notice. This includes daily and weekend Masses, funerals, and any other gatherings or activities. There is no public access to our buildings at this time since we cannot ensure the safety of people coming and going. 

We’ll continue to worship together online on Sundays. As the situation continues to evolve, we are determining what’s possible and safe in terms of video taping Masses at New Roads, joining the Church of the Nativity online, or some combination. As we’re sure you can appreciate, there are many variables to consider. We’ll continue to send an email out on Saturday with the link(s) to join us online for worship each Sunday.

Below are some resources for you and your family to continue to grow in faith during this time:

• New Roads’ Lent message series, Enough, continues online. Watch Week 4 (new today!).
• Fr. Fleming’s blog, A Concord Pastor Comments, is a great source for daily inspiration and prayer.
• New Roads’ Spotify profile features a new playlist (“What we’re listening to”) with songs to help us to live out of hope and love during this season.
• We’ll continue to send out weekly resources for kids & families.
• Cardinal Sean and the Archdiocese of Boston are offering a Virtual Lenten Retreat.

Some other notes to make you aware of:

• Gifts to New Roads can be made using online giving or by mailing a check (please make checks payable to either St. Joseph Church or St. Luke Church).
• The collection of Easter baskets at St. Luke’s is suspended due to health concerns. If you’d like to continue to support St. Vincent de Paul at this time, donations may be made by mailing a check to the offices: 130 Common St, Belmont. Please make checks payable to: St. Luke's St. Vincent de Paul Society.
• CORI (background check) renewals for all volunteer ministers are on hold at this time. If you have a CORI, please hold on to it until our churches reopen. The deadline for renewals will be adjusted.
• The Archdiocese of Boston has indicated that we will not be gathering publicly for the celebrations of Holy Week & Easter. We are working on ways we can share in these most special holy days as a community.

While so many things are cancelled right now, please know that in the truest sense, church is not cancelled. We are a Body, not a building. Things are shutting down all around us, but as the people of God, we are called to rise up--together--in faith, hope, and love. Please know of our prayers and gratitude for you.

Peace, blessings, & love,
The New Roads Team
--
Connect with us online:
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Twitter

Hi Friends,

We wanted to reach out with an update on things going on at New Roads these days.

Both churches remain closed until further notice. This includes daily and weekend Masses, funerals, and any other gatherings or activities. There is no public access to our buildings at this time since we cannot ensure the safety of people coming and going. 

We’ll continue to worship together online on Sundays. As the situation continues to evolve, we are determining what’s possible and safe in terms of video taping Masses at New Roads, joining the Church of the Nativity online, or some combination. As we’re sure you can appreciate, there are many variables to consider. We’ll continue to send an email out on Saturday with the link(s) to join us online for worship each Sunday.

Below are some resources for you and your family to continue to grow in faith during this time:

• New Roads’ Lenten message series, Enough, continues online. Watch Week 4 (new today!).
• Fr. Fleming’s blog, A Concord Pastor Comments, is a great source for daily inspiration and prayer.
• New Roads’ Spotify profile features a new playlist (“What we’re listening to”) with songs to help us to live out of hope and love during this season.
• We’ll continue to send out weekly resources for kids & families.
• Cardinal Sean and the Archdiocese of Boston are offering a Virtual Lenten Retreat.

Some other notes to make you aware of:

• Gifts to New Roads can be made using online giving or by mailing a check (please make checks payable to either St. Joseph Church or St. Luke Church).
• The collection of Easter baskets at St. Luke’s is suspended due to health concerns. If you’d like to continue to support St. Vincent de Paul at this time, donations may be made by mailing a check to the offices: 130 Common St, Belmont. Please make checks payable to: St. Luke's St. Vincent de Paul Society.
• CORI (background check) renewals for all volunteer ministers are on hold at this time. If you have a CORI, please hold on to it until our churches reopen. The deadline for renewals will be adjusted.
• The Archdiocese of Boston has indicated that we will not be gathering publicly for the celebrations of Holy Week & Easter. We are working on ways we can share in these most special holy days as a community.

While so many things are cancelled right now, please know that in the truest sense, church is not cancelled. We are a Body, not a building. Things are shutting down all around us, but as the people of God, we are called to rise up--together--in faith, hope, and love. Please know of our prayers and gratitude for you.

Peace, blessings, & love,
The New Roads Team
--
Connect with us online:
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter

Hi New Roads family,

Let’s worship together *online* tomorrow. While we’d love to live stream from New Roads, realistically at this time we’re not set up to do that well. And, we want to allow our staff team, worship team, and their families to make safe choices given their own personal circumstances. So, here’s our plan for worshipping together tomorrow…

Join us tomorrow, Sunday, March 15, as we tune into the live stream of the 10:45am Mass at the Church of the Nativity in Timonium, MD. Link here: https://live.churchnativity.com

This is a dynamic worship experience with modern music, message series, and more. The live stream is very well done and invites you to not just watch but truly participate in worship. There’s even a way to chat as well as volunteer hosts to answer questions or take prayer requests during the service. For our New Roads community, we’re also inviting you to take a photo of yourself or your family joining in worship tomorrow which we’ll share out on social media to help our New Roads community feel more connected. Just tag us or send us a photo or video and we’ll be glad to repost it and share it out!

You can access Nativity’s online campus through your computer, smartphone, or via the Church of the Nativity App on Apple TV. Even better, you can AirPlay or screen share from your device to your TV so that the whole family can watch and worship together.

We wanted to pick one time for our community to come together--virtually--to keep up our regular rhythm of weekly worship as a faith community. However if 10:45am tomorrow doesn’t work for you, Nativity also live streams Mass at 5:00pm tonight, and tomorrow at 9:00am, 10:45am, and 12:30pm and offers rebroadcasts of the service at 3:00pm, 5:30pm, and 8:00pm tomorrow. Another option is to view Mass by accessing CatholicTV if you have cable programming or by visiting www.catholictv.org.

Please be sure to follow us on social channels (links below) as we’ll be updating much more frequently there. We are still working on plans for so much more including:

• Determining some specific days & times our churches will be open for private prayer
• Resources for kids and families
• Opportunities to connect & pray during the week
• Ways our community can help one another and serve the needs of our wider community during this time. One way to start is to fill out the form here created by the Belmont Parents Facebook group if you need help OR are able to offer help to neighbors in need.

Finally, if you are in need of any help or assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at any time. Our whole community is here to support and love one another.

Hope to “see” you online tomorrow!
The New Roads Team

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The start of a new year is always a time that draws us to two opposite but related tasks: to reflect on the past and to look forward to the future. As we reflect on the past six years of being a collaborative, what rises to the top is the mix of highs and lows, failures and successes, challenges and joy, progress and pain; as well as the unpredictable nature of this new road we’ve been journeying on. 

New Roads Catholic Community, St. Joseph and St. Luke, was formed as a collaborative in 2013, in response to the reality of declining churches. The reality of declining churches is a complicated problem without a simple or easy solution. But since day one we’ve been eager to jump in and work on it together.

Over the last six years, we’ve made mistakes to be sure--in communication, implementation, and more. One significant miss early on was to try to do more than was possible given our limited resources. We started off with an ambitious--and ultimately unrealistic--plan to transform all six Masses at both parishes. 

We worked to make various changes to create a dynamic experience of worship that would help grow disciples as well as welcome back the overwhelming percentage of Catholics who have disconnected from church. Attempting to create an engaging, relevant, accessible, and transformative experience at six Masses simultaneously was unsuccessful. 

Around 2017 we began focusing specifically on one Mass, the 10am Mass at St. Joseph. More than two years later we’re seeing some of the growth and fruit we’ve been praying for. People are growing in their relationship with God and deepening their commitment to following Jesus. Others are reconnecting with church for the first time in a long time. Children and families are overflowing. We consistently have over 60 children at Kids’ Church, our Children’s Liturgy of the Word program, as well as a dozen or more children in Tiny Disciples, our worship experience for kids ages 2-5. 

On a weekly basis we are over 75% full at the 10am Mass, a metric that points to the need to add an additional Mass to accommodate our current size and continuing growth. We need to pause here and say: wow! God is at work here. Our vision at New Roads is to be a growing church and because of the people who serve at New Roads, this vision is becoming a reality.  We’re at a point where we need to expand what we’re doing at the 10am Mass to an additional Mass time. 

Meanwhile, all of our other Masses, at both St. Joseph and St. Luke, have continued the decades-long pattern of slow to moderate decline in attendance over time. This decline is not something with a single cause or an easy solution. Churches everywhere are facing this reality.

At St. Luke’s we are at the point where we do not have enough people coming to Mass overall to justify the number of Masses we have on Sunday morning. Given that, we need to reduce the number of Masses at St. Luke by one.

Initially, our plan was to continue the 11:30am Mass, in thinking like a collaborative and wanting to offer a variety of Mass times between the two parishes, as well as to create the least disruption in the current schedule overall. However, after conversation and consultation with the community over several weeks, it seems that a Mass time between our two existing Sunday Mass times at St. Luke (9:00 and 11:30) would be the best time for our community to invest in, to join together and to serve. Given that, at St. Luke we will continue our 4pm Saturday Vigil Mass and we will have a 10:00am Mass on Sunday mornings at St. Luke. This change will take place starting March 1, 2020, the first Sunday of Lent.

At St. Joseph, given the increase in attendance, we will have a 9:00am and 10:30am Mass, also starting on March 1, 2020. Both those Masses will be the same experience as the current 10am Mass at St. Joseph--the same message series, music, hospitality, and kids programs. To make this additional Mass at St. Joseph a reality, we’ll be expanding all of our ministry teams at the 10am Mass. If you’re wanting to join in and support this effort, contact anyone on our team for more information.

Those who currently attend or serve at the 9:00 or 11:30 Masses at St. Luke are invited to come and serve at the 10:00 Mass at St. Luke--or of course to any other Mass time in our collaborative. To be clear: there is no plan to close St. Luke’s. The vision of New Roads always has been--and still is--to become two healthy, growing parishes. The fact that we have successfully created a Mass in our collaborative that is growing is truly good news for both parishes. 

Our plan, our hope, and our prayer is that the growth we are seeing at the 10am Mass at St. Joseph will one day expand fully to all Mass times at both parishes. We are excited and committed to continue to journey together toward that vision. It will take all of us working together to get there. 

Thank you for your love for this church and commitment to it. Let’s keep it up. The future might not be certain, but what is certain is that realizing our vision of becoming a collaborative with two growing parishes will require more love, more commitment, and more collaboration from all of us.

​Happy summer! We hope summer is off to a great start for you and your family and we wanted to share some of our summer plans here at New Roads. 

This winter, our staff team spent some time praying and reflecting on the life and ministry of Jesus and particularly about his rhythm between work and rest. This rhythm is something we’ve been working hard to incorporate into our lives individually and organizationally, as a church community. It’s surprisingly tough to do though, because we live in a busy, exhausting, and overworked world. In many ways, today’s world idolizes work and busyness. 

But Jesus was very clear in his life and ministry about taking time to retreat, to get away, and to rest. There is a time and a season for both work and rest--or to use the terms Jesus used: “fruitfulness” and “abiding.” 

As a community, we are being intentional about leaning into a rhythm of rest this summer. Of course we’ll be coming together for worship every week, but during July & August specifically we’ll be taking a break from our kids programs, message series, and coffee after the 9:00 & 10:00 Masses. There’s simply less going on here in general, and that’s intentional.

People in this church--including, of course, many of you who serve as ministers throughout the year--work really hard year round. And that’s needed and necessary and brings glory to God. And it also brings glory to God when we pattern our life after the life of Jesus.

We were created to work, to bear fruit, that’s for sure. And we were also created to rest. In fact, we were created not simply to rest from our work, but to work from our rest. Summer is a natural time for many people to experience the joy of rest--the joy of being vs. doing--and we hope you have some plans for rest and renewal this summer (or at another point this year). 

Kids programs, message series, and more resume on Sunday, September 9, 2018. And we'll be celebrating the start of a new year on Fall Kickoff, Sunday, September 16, 2018 at the 10:00 & 11:30 Masses. In the meanwhile, we look forward to worshipping with you at New Roads this summer at our normal worship times.

​We are excited to share an update about our facilities and space use. We’ve been working to address space use at both our churches since we became a collaborative in 2014. 

The St. Joseph parish house (also called a rectory, located directly across Common Street from St. Joseph Church) was unfortunately neglected for many years. Built in 1880, it had many outdated systems as well as significant deferred maintenance. The cost of renovation and updating for modest results was determined to be approaching a million dollars. Clearly, this was not a reasonable or appropriate option in keeping with Pope Francis’s direction about a simple lifestyle for priests.

The suggestion that the property be sold had been floated repeatedly, helping us to recognize a great opportunity. Following a site survey and consultation of the zoning regulations, it became clear that the property could be subdivided, permitting the sale of the existing building and allowing St. Joseph to retain the subdivided lot at 345 Waverley Street for future use. The parish proceeded with this plan in late 2015: the land was subdivided and the old rectory building and lot was sold. 

The original plan was to use the proceeds of the sale of the rectory to cover the cost of building a new rectory on the subdivided lot. However, it was determined that building a new rectory would require use of almost all of the funds from the proceeds of the sale of the rectory, which did not make it a good option as other capital improvements are and will be needed at St. Joseph.

Instead of building a new rectory at St. Joseph, it was decided that a more prudent path forward would be to use the St. Luke rectory as a residence exclusively. The Guidelines for Rectory Living established by the Archdiocese of Boston require parishes to provide living space for clergy separate from office buildings. Disciples in Mission, the pastoral plan for the Archdiocese, encourages that every consideration be given to encouraging priests to live in common rectories. Given this, St. Luke’s rectory will be used as a residence-only space where our pastor, Fr. Thom, and our parochial vicar, Fr. John, reside.

This also means that our collaborative offices will move to St. Joseph, which will house all staff by the end of this year. Since the existing first floor office space at St. Joseph does not accommodate our team and is more essential space for parish and ministry meetings, the decision was made to convert the 3rd floor of the building between the church and the hall into office space. (Belmont Cooperative Nursery School continues to rent space on the second floor of that building.)

There are several benefits to these changes:

1. The ability to provide a residence-only space for our two priests.
2. The ability for our staff to be in one facility which enhances collaboration and efficiency on our team.
3. The cost is substantially less than building a new rectory; only a portion of the funds from the sale of the rectory are being used to construct the offices. This allows us to have sufficient funds left over for additional capital improvements projects for the St. Joseph facility as required.
4. We have still retained the subdivided lot at 345 Waverley Street for future use.

By the end of this year, we will have transitioned our collaborative offices to St. Joseph. Stay tuned for an announcement about exactly when that will happen! In the meantime, please contact our Finance and Operations manager, Lou Fabrizio (lfabrizio@newroadscatholic.org), with any questions.

As a church, we are in the communications business. We are charged with communicating the most important message ever--the gospel of Jesus Christ. On any given weekend, we communicate in many ways: the homily (which we call the message), the announcements, Kids’ Church, the bulletin, the Web site, the environment of our spaces, interactions with volunteers and staff, and so much more. We want all these communication elements to work together to communicate the good news of God’s love for all people.

Today we want to dig into one area of communication which we do differently from other churches: the announcements. Aside from what is communicated during the celebration of Mass itself, we communicate at the beginning of Mass (something we call “the welcome & announcements”) and at the end of Mass (we call this “the news”). Why do we do announcements this way? And what is “the news” all about?

Welcome & announcements
At the 10:00, 11:30, and 5:30 Masses, before we begin worship, a member of the team welcomes everyone and shares what’s going on and what’s coming up in our community. There are many potential things to share and announce, but we limit these announcements to information that is relevant to many and open to all. Beyond the content of what is actually announced, our overall message in the welcome & announcements is that we’re glad you’re here, we’re excited to be here, and there are exciting things happening here! Ideally the welcome & announcements starts Mass off with excitement and enthusiasm. Mass is a celebration and the gospel is good news--every part of our worship experience should reflect that.

News
The news is what’s communicated at the end of Mass, after the Prayer after Communion, at the 10:00, 11:30, and 5:30 Masses. This includes a welcome to people who don’t normally come to church, the message summary and challenge, and some conversation with Fr. Thom. The news has a few purposes and goals:

1. Our priority as a church is to reach those who have been disconnected from church, and research shows that the number one reason unchurched people don’t come to church is that they don’t feel welcome. So the special welcome to them in the news is a chance to put them at ease, to speak to what their experience might be like, and to tell them that no matter what, our whole community is glad they’re here. And it seems to work. We have newcomers approach us after Mass to say, “Thank you so much for saying that. It really makes me feel that I am welcome and I belong.”
2. The message (the homily) is the primary communication method of the whole worship experience. Given that, we take some time to recap the message and challenge for the week so that people are sent out on mission. The message recap also allows people to hear the message in a voice other than Fr. Thom’s. Oftentimes an idea or concept sinks in better when you’ve heard it from more than one person and in different words.
3. Another goal of the news is to give some visibility to staff. In Catholic culture, there is often the idea that the pastor does it all. Fr. Thom does a lot, to be sure, but the parish is not the pastor alone and seeing other staff regularly (and knowing their name and role) helps to reinforce that there is depth of leadership in our church and that ultimately all of our work is a team effort.
4. The back-and-forth conversation at the end of the news is meant to lend some humanness to the liturgy. People are more likely to put the message into action if they feel it’s approachable and modeled in a way that makes it accessible.

That’s our current thinking about announcements at Mass. We've learned a lot and been inspired by looking at how healthy, growing churches communicate. With that being said, it’s definitely a work in progress! We rehearse the welcome and news every Thursday with an eye toward accomplishing the goals above and improving our communications skills. We know we’ve got room to grow and it’s great to gather weekly to work on it together. What’s coming up? We’ve experimented with an announcements video in the past and plan to take a next step with that in the new year--stay tuned!