“Lighting the Way to Christ; Living our lives through Stewardship”

Our Diocese of Lincoln has created a goal for each parish supporting one or more schools (St. John the Baptist and Lourdes Central Catholic for us) to not be paying a subsidy for school support that is more than 80% of regular Sunday collections. Some parishes in our diocese have been over 100% of their weekly collections with school subsidy. That is obviously unsustainable. Thankfully, we are not in that situation. Over the last five years, we have stayed very close to that 80% goal, and that is a testament to your generous stewardship as well as fiscal responsibility from the school expense side. There has also been a net income every year for the last five fiscal years. Thank you for your consistent financial support to the church and school!

 

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St. John the Baptist School Summary – By the Numbers

Join us for the 2nd annual OktoberFest this Saturday, October 5th, beginning at 5:00 p.m. at St. John the Baptist. This event will be a day of fun, excitement and entertainment and is open to the community. Admission into the festival is tree.

All proceeds from this event will directly support St. John the Baptist School.

Finding Happiness at the Fest

The festival includes attractions for the whole family:

• Food Trucks – La Cabañita Taco Truck, Beyond BBQ, Hy-vee, The Weenie Wagon, plus the Knights of Columbus will be serving food too!
• Plus, it wouldn’t be a festival without pretzels, pumpkin bars, Union Orchard Apple Cider Donuts, and so much more!
• From ring toss, dunk tank, and bingo, to plinko and the cake walk, we have games for all ages.
• New games and activities this year include Hammer Strike, Milk Jug Toss, Chicken in a Pot, Mechanical Pig Racing and Happy Paws Animal Rescue. Plus don’t miss out on face painting, the Pumpkin Patch, photo booths and all the fun inflatables.
• Live Music by The Old Crustry Minstrels
• Beer Garden for the 21 and older crowd – Open 5:00 p.m. to midnight, relax and take in the festival atmosphere under the stars. New this year is the VIP UNLIMITED BAR PACKAGE with limited beer stein.
• Quilt Raffle – Tickets are $1 each or six tickets for $5. The drawing will be held at the festival.
• Silent Auction – bid on fabulous items and experiences from some of Plattsmouth and Omaha’s best attractions.

Presale Tickets & VIP Discounts

Many ot our games and activities require tickets that you can purchase at the festival. Or, you can take advantage of EARLY ACCESS to tickets and our VIP UNLIMITED BAR Package. When you purchase your tickets for games and activities before October 4th, not only do you avoid busy lines at the festival, but you also receive 10% MORE tickets with your presale package!

Ticket packages can be purchased at the OktoberFest table in the commons after weekend Masses. Or, you can purchase tickets online and get even more bang for your buck!

To view list of attractions at the festival, or to purchase Presale Tickets and VIP Packages, click on this link.

Get Involved

Help make our annual fall festival a success! Volunteers are needed to help with set-up, to work games and activities during the event, as well as post-event take down.

To view volunteer shift opportunities or to sign-up to help at the festival, click on this link.

If you missed last year’s Fest, then you really missed out. To see what you missed, watch below. We hope to see you this Saturday, October 5th!

Cheers! 

Thank You to Our OktoberFest Event Sponsors 

Thank you to everyone who was able to attend one of our strategic planning Open Forums on July 28th & 29th. We appreciate the effort made to learn and ask questions about the future direction of our church and school. We received some good feedback from both the questions asked out loud, as well as the comment cards we collected. We will be reviewing these and adjusting the plan where applicable. To learn more about the Strategic Planning process, or to submit and idea or question, please click here.

In case you missed the Open Forum, you can watch a video recording of the meeting below. Just click on link below to begin watching.

Registration for the 2024 St. John the Baptist Golf Classic is full… but you can still join us for the banquet and steak dinner following the tournament on Saturday, August 3rd.

The dinner will begin at 1:00 pm in the St. John’s gymnasium. You’ll enjoy a delicious meal, great fellowship and a chance at winning some awesome raffle prizes and silent auction items.

Reserve your seat at the banquet by Friday, July 26th. Tickets are only $25 per person. Make your reservation online HERE.  Or, contact Mike Vaughn at 402.296.5422 to reserve your seat.

Thank you for supporting St. John the Baptist School!

Lighting the Way to Christ

Make plans now to attend one of the Strategic Planning OPEN FORUM sessions held on Sunday, July 28th @4:00 pm and Monday, July 29th @7:00 pm in the church commons.

At the session, you will have the opportunity to REVIEW and REACT to the first draft of the church and school’s strategic plan – its pillars/focus areas, objectives, and projects. There will also be time toward the end of the session to collect any input, questions or ideas from attendees.

We hope you will join us!

Save the date for our next Strategic Planning Open Forum!

Two meeting options are available for you to attend:

• Sunday, May 5th at 3:30 p.m. in the school gym
• Monday. May 6th at 7:00 p.m. in the church commons

We are excited to have Fr. Hottovy with us to present on the topic of “Sacred Architecture.” There will also be time at the end of the session for questions by attendees. Childcare will be available at both sessions.

We hope to see you there! 

New confessionals expected to deliver in three months. 

We are excited about the construction progress of our two new confessionals! While they have taken a little longer to build than expected, they should be ready for us to enjoy in about three months! The confessionals are modular and will need to be disassembled at the shop in Octavia … and reassembled once they arrive at our church.

We love the detailed craftsmanship and know they will be a beautiful addition to our parish! It will be worth the wait!