A Season of Changes - Sept 25, 2022

Thursday, September 22, brought the official start of fall. Though summer weather continues to linger, the change of the season has brought some changes to our parish as well.

Our Director of Music, Dr. Andrea Pobanz, will be leaving us for a position with our neighbors at the Cathedral of St. Mary. This will be her final weekend with us at St. Austin. In addition to her musical talents, Dr. Pobanz is passionate about health and fitness. Her new position at the Cathedral will allow her more flexibility to pursue her other projects as a Camp Gladiator fitness trainer and personal nutrition coach. She offers group workouts at several locations around Kyle, Texas, and you can find out more by searching the Camp Gladiator website or connecting with her on LinkedIn.

We are grateful to our liturgy committee for stewarding this transitional period and coordinating visiting pianists and musicians for the weeks ahead. We plan to conduct a visioning process with our liturgical ministers and the parish community before posting the position and beginning the search for a new Director of Music.

Our priests and deacons have also been revisiting our processes for baptism and marriage preparation. We resumed in-person baptism preparation courses after going virtual for the past two years, and we rewrote our webpage explaining the process to welcome families and prepare them for baptisms. You can find out more at Baptism.

I am also working with Deacon John De La Garza and a few parishioners to update our process for marriage preparation. In the past, St. Austin parishioners collaborated with the UCC to offer an engaged encounter weekend over at the UCC. We hope to bring this program back in-person sometime in the spring of 2023 using our ministry center. And we are always looking for volunteers to help us. Many hands make for light work, and we would just need couples to come for 1-2 hours at a time to present a specific talk or to serve a meal. We will continue offering the option to prepare for marriage by meeting with a sponsor couple, so we are also revisiting our materials that guide those sessions.

Jesus “makes all things new” (Rev 21:5). Guided by the Holy Spirit, we share in Christ’s mission by constantly renewing ourselves as a parish. Progress continues on the construction of our new parish campus, and we are likewise committed to renewing our ministries for this place and time in our parish’s history.

God bless,