Family Faith Formation

[Joe_5859]

I know different places have different costs of living, but that is pretty high. That’s more than twice what we charge. Of course, you did mention that there is busing and food involved. If we were doing that at my parish, our cost might be similar to yours.

Honestly, I hate charging for anything, but I know I have to in order to pay the costs associated with running the program.

When I look at other activities, though, the cost of faith formation is actually pretty low. If my daughter wants to be in a play at the park district, that’s $125 for just the 5 weeks (plus extra for t-shirts, DVD, tickets to see the show, etc.). Piano lessons are like $75/month, so from August through May, that’s about $750.

 

[TC3033]

I know different places have different costs of living, but that is pretty high. That’s more than twice what we charge. Of course, you did mention that there is busing and food involved. If we were doing that at my parish, our cost might be similar to yours.

Honestly, I hate charging for anything, but I know I have to in order to pay the costs associated with running the program.

When I look at other activities, though, the cost of faith formation is actually pretty low. If my daughter wants to be in a play at the park district, that’s $125 for just the 5 weeks (plus extra for t-shirts, DVD, tickets to see the show, etc.). Piano lessons are like $75/month, so from August through May, that’s about $750.

There WAS, when it was classroom based. They went from classroom to Family Faith Formation and the price stayed the same, prompting many questions many questions of why it costs so much (when we have to do all the work).

IMHO, I really think they’re going to have a hard time keeping families. Attendance is dropping, I’m hearing more grumblings, and seeing more discussion about the parish 10 min down the road that’s only $70 or so.

 

[Joe_5859]

There WAS, when it was classroom based. They went from classroom to Family Faith Formation and the price stayed the same, prompting many questions many questions of why it costs so much (when we have to do all the work).

Ah, right. It is rather mysterious that the price remained the same. I wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with that if the new program needed the money for some other purpose. Where I used to live, they raised the price to something over $100, which was a shock and upset people, but they were upfront about why the cost was going up (they were forced to change facilities from something they had been using for free to something they now had to rent). That made it much easier to accept, even though it stung more writing the check.

Asking them to be upfront about why the cost remained the same despite the chance seems like a reasonable request to me. It sounds like if they simultaneously lowered the cost when they launched the new program, it could have at least earned some good will among parents to give the it more of a chance.

 

[Horton]

Of course, you did mention that there is busing and food involved. If we were doing that at my parish, our cost might be similar to yours.

We don’t do busing but we serve dinner at youth group and the CCD kids get a snack. We have parents who donate if they can, and the youth group program (mine) or the CCD program picks up the extra costs.

 

[DiZent]

I was able to look at the list of parent topics on the familyformation.net website. Now I can see the sequence and it is based on the liturgical year. I attended a catechist retreat last weekend & the presenters were very interested in Family Formation. This Sunday is our catechist meeting for the February topic - Sacrament of the Sick. We actually had an Anointing Mass a few weeks ago. It was very moving. I reflected on your advice - some of the “extras” I was adding contributed to my time management issue. I still love the notebook activity, but need to keep the number of items added to a minimum - make the notebook a place to keep a memory of the topic, not a substitute for a workbook.