Faith Formation (WEDNESDAY NIGHT) FINE DINING
Holy Name had an exceptional parishioner by the name of Diane Van Valkanburg, God rest her soul. She served HNOJ in too many ways to mention, but she was loved by all who knew her. Attendance was waning in the Wednesday night religious education program for numerous reasons, competing sports and school activities, but mostly the general inconvenience it was to get entire families to and from HNOJ and to and from the family dinner table in the middle of very busy schedules. Fr. Jonathan came to Diane with the idea to feed the families on Wednesday night. It appeared to be very labor intensive, expensive and was not received well by the committee. They stonewalled until Fr. Jonathan recruited Diane. She said she wanted to get behind the project and that she was going to ask the HNOJ Knights to help her with the undertaking.
In 2004, the committee for Wednesday Night Religious Education came to us for support in helping them serve food. Many of the HNOJ families with two working spouses had to decide what was more important, a family dinner together at home or religious education for their kids at HNOJ. For some that’s an easy decision and others, difficult. For us the answer was BOTH. There have been a few Wednesday nights where we serve 800 people. There are HNOJ members who eat with us on Wednesdays and they don’t even have kids in the program. They come for the fellowship. The way to a person’s heart is often times through the stomach and the price is right, as attendees are asked to make a good-will offering. Being involved with the WEDNESDAY NIIGHT FINE DINING was the single biggest, best thing that happened to our newly formed KC Council, as it gave us tremendous positive exposure to the parish. We doubled our membership size within the first year of helping with that program.