Q: Tell us a little about yourself and your role at St. John Neumann Catholic Parish.

I’ve been a member of the St. John Neumann Catholic Parish in Canton, MI. for 33 years and have been involved in the Parish as a religious education teacher, a youth Alpha table host, a team leader for Vacation Bible School, a member of the choir, organizer and first president of the SJN Women’s organization, a sacristan, an Adult Alpha table host, session leader and now the Alpha® Coordinator for the Parish.

Q: What are some of the obstacles you face in evangelizing and forming disciples?

I would say that our main obstacle is getting beyond our Parish walls to evangelize and helping our parishioners feel comfortable evangelizing.

Q: What features of Mission Pathways’ software are the most beneficial to you?

I personally use the Mission Pathways software for registering participants and volunteers for Alpha®. The features that I especially like are the ability to place people in their small groups and the ability to send mass emails to the participants and volunteers. I also appreciate that we have historical records of participants from past programs that require registration.

Q: Why did you decide to use Mission Pathways?

The program was introduced to our Evangelization Director one year ago. As with any new program we needed a lot of support to learn the program and work with the Mission Pathways technical support team to personalize the program to meet our needs. The support we received was outstanding and Mission Suite serves our needs wonderfully.

Q: What advantages does Mission Suite have over how you did things before?

Before Mission Suite, registration for programs offered by the parish was done either on paper registrations or phone registrations. With Alpha, this information was entered into a spreadsheet which was time consuming. Often times records of participants were lost so we were not able to keep track of who participated in what. With Mission Suite, we are able to set up registrations for any program we are running so guests can register themselves on-line. Since the programs are never deleted from the software, we can keep track of everyone who ever participated in them. This feature allows us to make recommendations for individuals for next steps in their faith journey.