Hi HW,
Three years ago we moved to a parish with no Respect Life group so after a year of being the quiet newbie, I jumped in. Maybe this will help.
First I spoke to the Diocisan RL person. The USCCB has a model that is mirrored in most if not all diocese in the US. I met with her after infoming my pastor that I was doing so. She clued me into what resources were available, diocisan projects etc. She had a kind of job description for the parish RL coordinator too (which we don’t follow exactly). I then met with the pastor. This might seem backwards but I was much more prepared for my meeting with him by meeting with the diocisan RLC first. He had strong feeling of what he wanted included (no to Courage, yes to NFP and death penalty focus etc.).
The first year we did a few activities that mostly just brought awareness to the parish. We set up a table with Pro Life information. We were lucky to have permission for a whole table, not a piece of the literature rack. We sold flowers for Mother’s day, did a raffle and sold religious jewelry in the fall, held a Baby Shower in October. We donated our Baby shower stuff to the Gabriel Project at a near by parrish but in a year or two we should have our own Gabriel project going. We also held a Holy Hour on January 21.
We are doing voter awareness this summer/fall, distributing the Voters Guide from Catholic Answers and Vote for Life Bumper stickers.
In addition, the Coordinator attends two meetings a year at the chancery with the other parish RLCs.
We have a lot of money right now and are looking for ways to use it. We are a rural community and the pastor wants us to stay locally focused rather than give all we have to the inner city centers.
Oh, one of the first things I did was recruit (from a list the pastor gave me) about a half dozen other people to be the Committee. This was really important since I was new to the parrish.
We had some resistance but mostly support. The parish bazzar committe wouldn’t give us the ok for a booth, even though Father had already given his ok. We had a few people who were upset that we didn’t include an anti-war platform. We have not had any interest or members from the hispanic portion of our parish (about 50% of the regular Mass goers) so Father does the announcements etc himself at the Spanish Mass. We order most of our materials in English and in Spanish and the Spanish stuff flies off the table so at least the word is getting out.
Good luck. I am sure you and your wife will find this very rewarding if you jump in.
BTW, my mom is from KCK and we visit occasionally. Many cousins on both sides of the river.