Dear Faithful of St. Joseph the Worker Pastorate:
                It is with great sadness that I have to communicate to you that my Dad, Tom Brunner, died on Monday, November 11, 2024. He died of natural causes at the age of 73, and we are grateful to God for his life.
                I will be returning to Philadelphia on Sunday, November 17 for the funeral mass on Monday, November 18. Please excuse my absence for 2 weeks as I spend time with my family in Philadelphia. I will be returning to the pastorate on Saturday, November 30, after the Thanksgiving holiday.
                Any prayers or Masses you can offer for my dad is appreciated. His obituary can be viewed at: https://fitzgeraldsommerfuneralhome.com/tribute/details/876/Thomas-Brunner/obituary.html#tribute-start.
                May God bless you and keep you close to His Sacred Heart,
                Fr. Steve Brunner
                Parochial Administrator

                Dear Faithful of St. Joseph the Worker Pastorate: Right now, we have gone 1 year and 3 months with the Into the Deep Process. In the scheme of things, it is not a long time. It is important for us to consider what this means and to take inventory to where we are. This means that it is important to consider a number of things. For example: 1. We are sharing 3 priests (1 parochial administrator and 2 assistants) among 7 churches, 4 schools, and 2 daycare centers. 2. We have organized our Mass, Eucharistic adoration, and confession times for this area of Grant County. 3. Our staff is working with each other to support the mission of this local area. 4. We share a Director of Evangelization to bring Jesus to people and people to Jesus. 5. We coordinate our religious education activities so that Fr. Mark, Fr. Steve, and Fr. Sudhakar can be more present to the youth. 6. We have 1 bulletin as of July 1, 2024 so that we can communicate events going on in our area of Grant County and encourage participation in activities. 7. We have almost completely moved over to 1 website (stjworkerparish.com) which is easy to use and manage and highlights the many events we have going on in our pastorate. In the big picture, the Diocese has completed 1 official merging and is working on an additional merging. While we are working together in our pastorate, we have NOT official merged our financial assets. When this starts to happen, I will communicate this to our pastorate and communicate to everyone the details of the new financial structures. For now, we continue to improve our churches and schools so that when we do have our official canonical, legal, and financial merging we can continue this positive momentum! God bless, and see you around the pastorate, Fr. Steve

Dear Faithful of St. Joseph the Worker Pastorate:
                The process of the Into the Deep Initiative involves the canonical and financial merging of our seven churches, four schools, and two daycare centers. Currently, there is no news to communicate with regard to Into the Deep. Our six parishes remain distinct as parishes, and we have not officially financially merged yet.
                With that said, we have taken steps to share our resources together. For example, we started the one bulletin on July 1, 2024. This bulletin does not cost the parishes anything due to our contract with Wolf’s Grantland Graphics. We are very grateful to them for assisting us in this endeavor, as we wanted to keep the publishing of the bulletin to a local business, instead of going national or even outside of the area. I want to remind everyone that our goal is to come together as a family of faithful Catholics in Grant County; that is to say, a family that supports each other, goes to each other’s events, and helps each other out. Our goal is not to exist in isolation. This is reflected in the layout of the bulletin as it is meant to attract your interest to the many different events we have going on in and through our seven churches, four schools, and two daycare centers!
                Furthermore, the website is in the process of being consolidated so that stjworkerparish.com has all of our churches and schools’ information. We remain patient as this endeavor continues.
                Thank you for your attention in reading this update, and may God bless you,
Fr. Steve

                Dear Faithful of St. Joseph the Worker Pastorate:
                Wow! Where has the summer gone? Currently, we are ready to start the new year in religious education. Last year, Fr. Mark had his first year leading the Family Faith Formation Program in the southwest churches of St. Mary’s, St. Charles’, St. Mary Help of Christians, and St. John’s. This year, our goal is to extend Family Faith Formation to Ss. Andrew-Thomas Parish in Tennyson/Potosi. Family Faith Formation is a new model for doing religious education that has been increasingly appreciated and implemented all over the United States and in our Diocese. One of the biggest differences between Family Faith Formation and Traditional Faith Formation is that Family Faith Formation occurs once a month at church where parents participate, and then, parents instruct their children at home. The traditional faith formation model involves parents dropping off their children for an hour to 2 hours and then picking them up and going home. As you can see, the big advantage of Family Faith Formation is that we, as a church, are assisting parents in their desire to instruct their children. Many times, parents don’t really know where to begin or what to do because they’ve never been instructed themselves, are too busy with life, or don’t feel like they have the ability to do so. Family Faith Formation seeks to align the church with the family in the parents’ handing on of the faith to their children.
                The goal is to implement Family Faith Formation at Ss. Andrew-Thomas this year, as the St. Charles families collaborate with them due to the already existing collaborations between Potosi-Cassville. Then, next year, the plan is to extend Family Faith Formation to St. Clement so that all churches can benefit from the program.
                As a final note, Family Faith Formation allows the three of us priests, Fr. Mark, Sudhakar, and me to participate in the evening. Fr. Mark enjoys teaching the parents, Fr. Sudhakar teaches the 2^nd grade for First Reconciliation/Communion, and I teach the 7^th and 8^th graders. The setup allows us to fully participate and encourage our youth to follow Christ and allows for 4^th Wednesday of the month to be devoted to post-confirmation instruction.
                There are many other things to say with respect to faith formation, but for now, I’ll end it here in this introductory letter. I encourage all of our families to check the faith formation schedules for K-6, 7&8^th grades, and 9^th-12^th grades! More forms can be found at the church entrances for more info!
                God bless, Fr. Steve

                  This weekend marks the second weekend we have published our new bulletin. Previously, we had 3 bulletins, and now we have 1 bulletin for the 7 churches, 4 schools, and 2 daycare centers in our pastorate. Many thanks to Grantland Graphics, a local business, for publishing this new project. The idea is that the one bulletin will show events and activities for the churches and schools in our territory so that parishioners don’t have to jump from one bulletin to another to find out what’s going on in our area. The new bulletin also has all of our contact information, addresses, and events so that parishioners and visitors can easily locate church information, mass times, confession times, and Eucharistic adoration times. As it is a new endeavor, please keep in mind that we will probably need to revise or tweak a few things. Remember, we don’t know what we don’t know. So, we hope the new bulletin is easy to read and will provide you with the information you need to be an informed and practicing Catholic in Grant County. 
                  I want to thank all of our staff members for working together in launching our new bulletin, including Cheryl Junk, Julie Jentz, Aleise Oyen, and Katherine Bernhardt. I want to especially thank Katherine Bernhardt for her hard work in putting this bulletin together as she becomes the primary editor of the bulletin. In the meantime, we are diligently working on organizing our website so that we can officially launch our new website: stjworkerparish.com. 
                  As we celebrate the 1 year anniversary of starting “The Into the Deep” project, we have not officially had the canonical and financial merging of our parishes. Remember, I will communicate to you when this is occurring and provide you with the relevant information needed to understand the process. I will make it very obvious to you when we are going through the official merging. For now, we stay patient and keep doing what we’re doing and God will provide for us. Thank you all for your patience in this process, and all that you are doing in our pastorate. 

May God bless you!
Fr. Steve Brunner