On This Date in Nativity History
14 September 2014
On this date, September 14, 2014, the day after the groundbreaking for the Father Martin Center, Nativity celebrated another kind of community building: our first ministries fair. As people exited the church after Mass, they encountered across the entrance plaza and the church grounds booths and kiosks set up for each church ministry or volunteer activity. We wanted to celebrate what we already had in place for service, outreach, and many other community groups, but we also wanted to offer new opportunities for parishioners to become more deeply involved in the life of the parish. As of July 13, 2022, Nativity offered seventy-two ministries and services.
In his interview with the Nativity History Project in December 2015, Father Bob put the ministry fair into a broad context.
” …it was a time of transition; first a sense of shock, sadness and maybe some anger, a normal human feeling when there’s a sudden change or loss. And then we moved into kind of neutral zone for the parish, a sense of “what’s going to happen now?” There might be some doubt, some skepticism, wondering what this new pastor is going to be like… For me the most important thing was just to show care and concern and join with the community in their time of mourning.
And then like all transitions then there comes a time of acceptance and a time of realizing how important this is for our community and our faith and for our being together. And what can happen is that new innovation and new energy and enthusiasm can come from the transition. It really is the Paschal Mystery enacted, the dying and the rising. So, although in the transition there is a time of dying and skepticism and doubt, from that can come new life. And at Nativity we experienced that together.
We had our first Nativity ministries fair celebrating all the ministries and the giftedness of the parish and inviting others to share their gifts, their time, their talent. It’s a way of living out our baptism. So even though we were going to be building new buildings, the church is not buildings; the church is the people of God. So, we wanted to celebrate that, strengthening our community, strengthening our relationships with one another. “
Photos of the ministry fair courtesy of Soledad Oliveira.