Decision #5 - Daily Mass Rotation and Office Hours
Updates
Update #1 (2024-07-20): Entire Mass schedule revised based on Fr. Thumbi living in Lynden, not Bellingham.
Problem to be Solved
How do we cover our daily Masses and ensure priests are present in our offices?
A Giant Caution
This is a temporary solution. Our daily Mass schedule and office hours are subject to change as we continue along in the Partners process. The below simply ensures that we have a workable schedule on July 01 to cover the status quo.
July 01 Daily Mass Schedule
N.B.: I requested that we move the daily Mass in Deming from Wednesday to Monday, in order that no priest should automatically have to celebrate two Masses in one day. You can read the letter I wrote to that community here.
Monday
9:00 am - St. Peter, Deming
9:00 am - Sacred Heart, Bellingham
Tuesday
5:30 pm - Assumption, Bellingham
6:00 pm - St. Joseph, Ferndale
Wednesday
7:15 am - Assumption, Bellingham
9:00 am - St. Anne, Blaine
5:00 pm - Viking Catholic
6:00 pm - St. Joseph, Lynden (Spanish)
Thursday
7:15 am - Assumption, Bellingham
9:00 am - Sacred Heart, Bellingham
9:00 am - St. Joseph, Lynden
6:00 pm - St. Joachim, Lummi
Friday
8:15 am - Assumption, Bellingham (school Mass)
9:00 am - Sacred Heart, Bellingham
9:00 am - St. Joseph, Ferndale
9:00 am - St. Joseph, Lynden
Operating Principles
Sanity
A major threat to the success of a parish with multiple locations is priest burnout from feeling like a pinball, jumping from one location to another all the time. In order to keep them sane, we want to try to keep our priests to one, or at most two, locations each day. This means trying to give them Masses or office hours at their place of residence or give them Mass and office hours at the same place each day.
Availability
Our parishioners are used to having priests available at four different locations, so for at least the first year we want to try to make sure priests are available at all four (Sacred Heart, Assumption, Ferndale, and Lynden) offices.
That said, priests will be less available than before, for the following reasons:
Priests work on the weekends, so they typically take Monday or Tuesday as their weekly day off, giving them only four office days. This is not changing on July 01: Fr. Moore and Fr. Thumbi will both take Mondays off, while Fr. Tyler and Fr. Stephan will both take Tuesdays off.
Previously, with four priests each working four office days, the County had 4 x 4 = 16 priest-days each week.
Now, with Fr. Tyler’s assignment to Viking Catholic, he will be doing all of his office hours at Western, so we are reduced to 3 x 4 = 12 priest-days each week in our parish offices. We cannot have a priest “full time” in every office.
In order to try to maintain availability, we will use six (50%) of our priest-days outside of Assumption and six (50%) of our priest-days at Assumption. This means that Sacred Heart, Ferndale, and Lynden will each have a priest in their offices 2 days each week.
Every Day at Assumption
Even though Assumption accounts for 40% of the total Mass-going population in Whatcom County (see this post), I have been trying to maintain balance between our different parishes in my decisions. Unfortunately, I do need to make an exception for priest office hours.
Parochial Vicars are a great gift to a parish for a number of reasons. They bring variety to the preaching and charisms of the ordained ministers, and they are often far freer to attend events or catechetical programs than the Pastor. They also provide significant help to the Pastor by taking the majority of emergency calls and funerals.
Related to this last point, the reality is that Assumption is a 5-minute drive from the only hospital in Whatcom County, so having a priest at the Assumption office every day guarantees that we have someone close and available for emergency calls. Assumption also has significantly more funerals than our other parishes with offices.
| FY23 Funerals | |
|---|---|
| Assumption | 28 |
| Sacred Heart | 8 |
| Ferndale | 7 |
| Lummi | 7 |
| Lynden | 5 |
| Blaine | 5 |
| Deming | 5 |
(Information from the Annual Reports submitted to the Archdiocese. FY22 numbers used when data appeared to be missing.)
Creating a Schedule
The following is less a process and more a stream-of-consciousness as I made different decisions and balanced different interests.
Step 0 - Blank Slate
Locations with a parish office are marked in color. Locations without a parish office are marked in gray.
Step #1 - Home Base
As a first step, I tried assigning each priest to the daily Masses on the campus where he will live, as one way to reduce the number of locations he is at each day.
Fr. Moore and Fr. Dass both live in Ferndale.
Fr. Dass takes Tuesdays off, so Fr. Moore takes the Tuesday Mass in Ferndale.
Fr. Dass then gets the Friday Mass in Ferndale.
Step #2 - Arrange Monday and Tuesday
With priests taking their days off on Mondays and Tuesdays there are few options, making these days easy to determine.
Fr. Dass and Fr. Johnson both work on Mondays and take Tuesdays off.
Fr. Moore and Fr. Thumbi both take Mondays off and work on Tuesdays.
Step #3 - Priest-Specific Masses
There are certain Masses that specific priests need to say.
Fr. Johnson always says the Mass at Viking Catholic.
There were three special Masses that I thought I, as the Pastor, needed to take:
Spanish: I am the only Spanish-speaking priest at the moment, so I need to say the Spanish daily Mass in Lynden. This also allows me to stay connected to the Spanish-speaking community. This meant moving Fr. Thumbi either to Assumption or Blaine on Wednesdays, and the Blaine Mass is more reasonable coming from Lynden.
Lummi: Historically, the Lummi Nation was almost entirely Catholic, but today very few actively practice their faith. Repairing that relationship is important and I consider it a special duty of the Pastor. Saying that daily Mass gives me weekly contact with our Lummi folks.
School: I want to maintain a strong relationship with our Catholic school and saying the school Mass each week will help that significantly.
Step #4 - Fill In the Remaining Slots, Add Office Hours
Unassigned priests are given unclaimed Masses.
As a default, priests take office hours at the location they are saying Mass (except Fr. Johnson, who is always at Viking Catholic).
Step #5 - Rebalance
Make sure our operating principles are respected.
Principle #1: Sanity
MONDAY: Fr. Johnson had four Masses in Bellingham, which does not distribute the load of outlying Masses equally. And the Ferndale to Deming drive asked of Fr. Dass is one of our longest possible distances from a priest’s rectory. So it made sense to ask Fr. Johnson to make one north/east county drive so that Fr. Dass could keep his driving to one campus that day.
WEDNESDAY: If Fr. Thumbi is going to say Mass in Blaine, which is already a far drive from his house, it makes sense to place his office hours at the nearest parish office to Blaine, which is Ferndale.
Principle #2: Availability
THURSDAY: Fr. Moore needed a pastor day at Sacred Heart, and Thursday was the remaining open day.
FRIDAY: After all the above changes were made, Ferndale and Lynden both had +1 priest-days than they were promised and Sacred Heart and Assumption both had -1. By switching both Fr. Dass and Fr. Thumbi to Assumption on Friday, it allows the priests to have one day at the same office where they can meet and collaborate. It also allows Fr. Moore to have a full pastor day on Fridays, without worrying about funerals or sick calls.
Principle #3: Assumption
MONDAY: After all of the above, Assumption had +1 priest-day and Sacred Heart -1. In order to balance everything and preserve “Priest Fridays”, there will be no priest at Assumption on Mondays, which is a breach of our principle. However, Sacred Heart and Viking Catholic are both close enough to the hospital to fulfill to goal of having emergency calls easily answered. This change is also prompted by the fact that the Sacred Heart office is normally closed on Fridays and the Assumption office is closed on Mondays.
