Altar Servers

Daily Scheduling | Weekend Scheduling | Mission & Goals | Enrollment | First Year & Experienced Servers

MISSION

To provide boys and girls in the sixth through twelfth grades with the opportunity to learn more about their faith and to begin to build a foundation of evangelization and stewardship by serving at Mass and other liturgical functions.

GOALS:

To enhance the servers understanding of liturgy and services to the faith community.
To ensure a balance of servers between Catholic school and public school boys and girls.
To give each server at least one opportunity during the three-year term to serve at various liturgical functions (e.g. funerals, Stations of the Cross, etc.).
To encourage them to seriously consider a vocation to the priesthood or religious life.
To instill in them a life-long desire and commitment of service to the Church and people in need.
To assist parents in helping the boys and girls develop a sense of responsibility, dependability and accountability in commitments they make to serve.
To enlist the aid of the parents in the instruction of their sons and daughters by reviewing with them the server booklet and the missalette and by teaching them the Mass prayers and responses.

ENROLLMENT

Enrollment of new servers occurs in April each year. Applications are distributed to all fifth grade students through St. James School and CCD, and are also available in the Narthex. Orientation of new servers occurs in May with training in June. Annual registration for current altar servers occurs in May.

FIRST YEAR SERVERS

New servers will be assigned to weekday masses (7 a.m. or 8 a.m.) in the Chapel during their first year of service, which begins in July. Depending on the number of new servers, this will mean serving one week of masses (5 consecutive days) about every 6-8 weeks (5-7 times in the course of the year). During their second and third years, servers will be assigned to weekend masses in the Church, as well as, Holy Day masses. Public and private school children are assigned to the 7a.m. weekday mass to accommodate their school opening time. St. James students are assigned to either the 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. weekday mass.

EXPERIENCED SERVERS

Servers in the seventh through twelfth grades who have completed their first year of Altar Serving in the chapel will be assigned to Sunday and Holy Day masses in the church. Depending on the total number of Altar Servers, they are usually scheduled to serve once every three to four weeks. Church training is held in June each year.

SCHEDULING

Schedules are mailed home at four-month intervals. The altar server ministry is a yearlong commitment and it is the responsibility of the server to find a substitute when unable to serve as scheduled. Due to the challenges of scheduling nearly 100 servers, individual special requests (e.g., vacations or time away) cannot be accommodated.

For more information or to volunteer please contact

Donna & Scott Nafie at 908-766-4124

Online Schedule:

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