St. Luke is an active and rapidly growing parish. There are over 1000 new homes under construction within the boundaries of our parish and even more slated to be built. It is reasonable to assume that many of these will house catholic families moving into our area. As a parish we have a great responsibility to make them welcome and help them find a spiritual home here with us.  We must also help them to understand our parish, a parish which is founded upon a deep faith in God and in one another and which functions according to true stewardship of God's gifts. Inviting new people to participate in the many ministries and activities of the parish, reaching out to them and making them welcome and helping them to get to know others in our  parish family, and encouraging them to support the work of the mission to which we are all called as God's people, members of His Church, is the responsibility of all of us. Our parish is noted for its friendliness and warmth, something of which we can all be proud. In the days and years ahead we must truly be God's Texans (the word "Texan" means friend") to all our newcomers.  We also have the serious responsibility of helping parents educate their young in the ways of the faith and develop their faith lives.

As a parish, we must plan for our future growth. It is expected that our parish may eventually top out at 4500 ot 5000 families! We have been planning in many ways. One of these was the search for more land upon which we can expand facilities and plan future development. Recently we had the good fortune of acquiring a twenty-acre tract that is less than a mile from our present location. Two very generous and helpful persons opened the door for us to acquire this. I hope that all of you will please keep them in your prayers. We own the land now and it is debt-free thanks to the generous response of our parishioners and our benefactors. 

We also spruced-up and remodeled the church. It will have to serve us for ten or so years into the future, and maybe longer. We have had the foundation leveled and shored-up, the roof leaks repaired; and plumbing repaired. We added more windows for light; extended the narthex to enclose the area under the front roof, replaced the pews, kneelers and re-carpeted the floor. We refurbished the altar area adding a new tiled floor, a new altar, ambo, and gospel-book throne and remodeled the chapel as a Blessed Sacrament Chapel for a more dignified place of reservation for the Lord present in the Eucharist. We formed a liturgical environment committee, which guided this process and we employed liturgical architects and artisans. You now see the completed and debt-free project in its beauty. It is a sign that we are limited only by our own will as to what we can accomplish with the Lord's help.

Our liturgies have been constantly developing with newer and larger singing groups, music, instrumentalists, and liturgical possibilities and options. We have had and will have parish missions and days of prayer.  We have hosted our own Parish Liturgical Conference for our people and those of surrounding parishes and we are planning new developments in faith-formation programs for our whole parish, youth and adults alike. We  enlarged our involvement in social service and social justice. We hope to offer more opportunities for greater spiritual development to our people in the years ahead and foster more evangelical activities to bring others to the knowledge and experience of the faith and all that the church truly teaches. (After all, we are St. Luke the EVANGELIST parish!)

Our present facilities are woefully inadequate for our many needs. We must begin the exciting and difficult task of preparing for our future and providing more facilities for all our activities. For example, over 1500 letters for pre-registration went out to 1500 FAMILIES for this fall's CCFF programs. We are expecting over 1200 young people to be enrolled! We have EIGHT classrooms!!!  Additionally we have about 74 ministries in the parish many of whom need space for meetings and activities. Also we have the Kinghts of Columbus, the Catholic Daughters, and the Guadalupanas organizations who meet here. Other activities include our Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, Boys Scouts, Senior groups, Tap Dancing group, Quilting Group etc. etc.etc. all of whom need places to meet, store their things, and carry out their activities. We are so successful at growing as a parish we have outgrown our buildings!  We desperately need to construct a new parish education and activities center, and Paish hall. ( Our Current one only holds about 250 people!) Our church building can serve us for the present and possibly for another 8 to 10 years. But we need more space for everything else!

Recently we formed a Parish Building Committee to oversee the future development of the parish. They spent a year studying documents of the Church, Diocesan guidelines, and our parish needs. They formed an Architectural Sub-Committee which selected, from a large group of architects, the firm of Hall, Barnum and Luccesi to lead us through future development. They have met with the committee and ministries and conducted parish surveys and have begun the process of sorting out all our needs and requests and designing buildings to meet them.  We will soon be interviewing and selecting a capital campaign group to help us in the future. As we progress, everyone will be hearing more and more about what is taking place and asked to be more and more involved in it.  We MUST prepare for our future now; otherwise we will be playing catch-up for years to come. So as a stewardship parish, we have to develop and rely on our foresight and the direction in which God is leading us for the sake of ourselves and the future generations of the St. Luke Family.

As you can see we are doing very well as a parish family  with great hopes and plans for the future. All of this requires the interest, involvement and dedication of ALL our parishioners as well as our constant support. So if you would like to get excited about your faith; if you would like to grow closer to God and His people; if you would like to develop your own faith-life, and would like to meet some of the greatest people on earth  then COME FORWARD ..AND GET INVOLVED! You'll be glad you did !