Parish Launches Effort to Welcome People Back

In the fall of last year as COVID restrictions eased and people began to resume some of their normal prepandemic activities, Deacon John and Martha Lohrstorfer looked around and noted an alarming trend at their beloved parish, St. Basil Parish, South Haven — empty pews. Parishioners still seemed reluctant to come back to Mass. Instead of accepting this trend as inevitable, the two set out to launch an initiative to inspire not just St. Basil’s parishioners to come back but all of the church-going South Haven community.

The first step in what would become the city-wide “Wel-come Back Weekend” began as a conversation between concerned clergy and lay ministers at the South Haven Ministerial Alliance. It wasn’t just the Catholic Church that noticed fewer people attend-ing Mass, but all churches in the area experienced the same trend. The alliance members were quick to lend their support to the initiative, and St. Basil, with more than 30 parishioners working on various committees, took the lead on organizing.A fall weekend in October was chosen to host a city-wide event at the newly opened South Haven Senior Community Center with 10 local participating churches. That same weekend churches then followed up with services and events within their own worship communities.

“The last two and half years [have] been very hard on everyone,” noted Martha, one of the committee chairpersons. “Some people coped well and carried on. Others became depressed, still others lost loved ones, and the vast majority adapted to a new way of living and patterns which they see no reason to change.”

In discussing with people why they were no longer attending church or Mass, Martha notes some common responses. Some of those included “I just don’t miss it.” “No one called me, so I guess they forgot about me.” “I don’t want to go back and be judged.”

To prepare for the event the committee sent postcards and called people. They got the buzz going in the community through local radio and news-paper coverage.

More than 200 people attended the Saturday eve-ning city-wide event, which was dubbed “Pasta with the Pastors.”

“It was amazing to see all the people come together from different faith communities and join together during a meal and have the ministers together,” says Father Richard Altine, Senior Parochial Vicar at the parish. “Even now, I’ll be sitting in a restaurant eating and someone will come up and say — ‘oh, I met you at the dinner.’ Not often you get people of the community talking about a faith event.”

The St. Basil parish community followed up with a Mass on Sunday with Bishop Bradley. The church was decorated with more than 600 signed red hearts and banners placed throughout with the theme, “Come back to me with all your heart.” Following Mass was a ministry fair.

In his homily for the Mass Bishop Bradley emphasized the importance of renewal.

“[It’s important] to make constant efforts to keep our faith strong, and allow our love for God to deepen,” he said. “That’s why I love what you’re doing here at St. Basil Parish this weekend, along with all the other churches here in South Haven. This Welcome Back weekend is such a wonderful and import-ant initiative to reach out to all our friends and neighbors and remind them how im-portant our relationship with God is. We can’t go through our lives in this world think-ing that we can manage on our own.”

Following Mass the parish hosted a variety of activities including a showing of an episode from The Chosen and a program held in the church entitled “Angels among Us — Stories from St. Basil’s Past” featuring stories shared by long-time parishioners. Additionally, the Knights of Columbus along with mem-bers of the Hispanic community and the Women’s Guild, hosted an Oktoberfest.

“This was an amazing weekend,” adds Deacon John. “But to say that we could bring people back to church with a few events like this would take an amazing amount of hubris. What we did was plant a mustard seed. It’s up to the Holy Spirit to make it grow.”