​New Roads is excited to launch Small Groups, a new initiative to help people integrate faith into their everyday lives, become more deeply connected, and to experience and share the blessings of community. The spiritual growth in a small group setting ideally leads to personal transformation, as well as an outward move to others in service and discipleship.

What kind of small group would you like to be part of? Young adult professionals? Students? Moms with young children? Interfaith couples? Women juggling family and career? People who live alone who want to share a weekly potluck meal? LGBT Allies? Men’s? Women’s? Married couples? Shared interests such as participating in a social justice outreach effort? Our relationship with God is part of every element of our lives, and belonging to a small group community helps us to better integrate our faith and the way we spend our days.
 
Small Groups will begin in conjunction with the next message series in mid-October. The structure of the group process is a weekly meeting of about 90 minutes, to include a reflection on the message, and how its challenge can be integrated into your life. Group leaders will receive questions to guide the conversation and sharing. Groups will meet in homes or settings appropriate to the group’s needs. The series will run for approximately 6 weeks. 
 
We’re eager to learn what kind of small groups would appeal to you, and who you might invite to join you! Once the groups are finalized and have designated leaders, the meeting times and places will be published on our website, and you will be able to sign up there, or at Mass.

To learn more or share your idea for a group, contact Paula Lee in the New Roads parish office: plee@newroadscatholic.org. We look forward to starting this new initiative with you! 

​Two weeks ago, New Roads had the honor of hosting the Rebuilt Roadshow, one of four one-day conferences this spring put on by the Church of the Nativity, a Catholic parish located in Timonium, Maryland. Several staff members from the Church of the Nativity journeyed up to Belmont to share insights and encouragement about what they’ve learned along their parish’s rebuilding journey. Through transforming their Catholic parish culture, Nativity experienced dramatic increases in weekend Mass attendance, giving, and service, amounting to nothing short of a transformation. The Roadshow is all about encouraging other parishes in their efforts to rebuild and make disciples.

About 100 people from over 25 parishes around New England came to the Rebuilt Roadshow at St. Joseph to listen and learn, ask questions, connect, and be inspired in their own rebuilding journeys. Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran, authors of the book Rebuilt, gave the opening and closing keynotes which were insightful and inspiring. The New Roads worship team led us in worship throughout the day, helping us feel God’s presence and bringing a palpable energy and excitement to the atmosphere. Q&A sessions allowed attendees to learn more about Rebuilt as well as what our path has been so far at New Roads. 

We were thrilled to have over a dozen of our New Roads ministers serving at the conference to make it all happen. It would not have happened without our ministers! From parking ministers to greeters to our café team to small group discussion leaders to our operations and facilities team, it was amazing to see New Roads members stepping up to serve, modeling servant leadership, and making this event possible. 

Attendees at the Roadshow were eager and curious, challenged but encouraged and open, in beginning to implement some of the transferable principles of parish rebuilding in their own parishes. We are so grateful to get to partner with Church of the Nativity and continue to benefit from their honesty, humility, and generosity as they work to make disciples, reach the lost, and make church matter--and help churches like New Roads and many others to do the same.

With Labor Day officially behind us, we’re excited for the start of the fall season at New Roads. This summer has been an intentional time of rest, slowing down, and pausing (from message series, kids programs, fellowship after Mass, etc.). We hope your summer has been a time of rest and refueling too! Starting this Sunday, September 9, 2018, we’ll resume our message series, kids programs, and more. What’s starting back up exactly?

New message series: On September 9, we’ll start a new message series called “Born to Run.” This series is all about our tendency to want to run away when life gets tough. On some level, we’re all running away from something or avoiding something in our lives: maybe it’s a stressful job, a broken relationship, or a messy past. And there are as many ways to escape as there are reasons to want to run away. But no matter our circumstances, our escapism actually provides no escape. Join us for this series at 10:00, 11:30, and 5:30 as we explore what’s below the surface of our escapism and chart a better path forward. 

Tiny Disciples: A drop-off worship experience for kids ages 2-5 starting just before Mass begins and ending just after Mass is over. Kids get the chance to have fun and learn about God on their level while their parents get some quiet time to participate in worship. Tiny Disciples takes place weekly at 10:00am (St. Joseph) and 11:30am (St. Luke). No sign up needed; just follow signs to the Tiny Disciples Room to join us!

Kids’ Church: A worship experience for all kids in grades K-5. How does it work? Children come to Mass with their families. Then, after the opening prayer, they are invited to come forward to gather in a separate space for readings, a message, and fun activities geared to their age. Parents stay in “big church” and kids rejoin us about 30 minutes later, at the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Kids’ Church takes place weekly at 9:00am (St. Luke) and 10:00am (St. Joseph). No sign up needed, just show up!

That’s all starting this Sunday, September 9. The following Sunday, September 16, at the 10:00am and 11:30am Masses, we’ll celebrate our annual Fall Kickoff. Fall Kickoff is all about inviting friends and neighbors who don’t have a regular church home to join us at New Roads.  Fall is naturally a time when people and families are open to trying something new (like coming to church) and Kickoff is a great, specific day to invite new folks to join us at New Roads. After all, our vision is to be a growing community of people growing in relationship with God and reaching out to friends and neighbors. Inviting friends and neighbors isn’t just something we do, it’s who we are!

Our goal on Kickoff Sunday is to help new folks feel welcomed and get connected. It’ll be an all-hands-on-deck effort from our fantastic hospitality teams (greeters, host ministers, info desk, etc.) and from our community as a whole. Want to be part of making it happen? Email info@newroadscatholic.org to get plugged in to serving on Fall Kickoff. And be sure to grab some invite fliers at church this weekend to make inviting a friend or neighbor to Fall Kickoff even easier. Or, send them the link to our Fall Kickoff page. We look forward to seeing you soon!

​The inspiration for starting this blog is to bridge a gap in communication that exists in our community. There is so much going on behind-the-scenes at New Roads--at our weekly team staff meetings, with our kids programs, with our worship team, our team health and growth, our building plans, and more. And yet, it’s too much to communicate on Sunday or even to include in a printed bulletin. 

But there’s information we want to share, ideas that people are eager to be a part of, and plans that would be helpful for people to know about, especially people on our extended team--that is, anyone and everyone who serves in ministry at New Roads. Anyone serving in ministry at New Roads is part of our team and team members get to know what is going on and what is coming up! So the primary purpose of this blog is to communicate with our whole team, not just our paid staff, but the many volunteers who make New Roads what it is!

Our goals for this blog are simple:

• To open up a communication channel with our broader team (all those who serve in ministry at New Roads)
• To communicate more clearly with our community about strategic decisions and to give us common language and understanding around strategic decisions or topics
• To help us to see how everything we’re doing fits into our larger mission and vision
• To help other churches who seek to understand or learn from what we are doing
• To give staff a voice to speak to our whole community

We’re excited to launch this blog and we invite you to subscribe by email so that you don’t miss a beat! Just enter your email address below, click submit, and you'll get an email whenever a new blog post is published.