By Gretchen Keiser

Quietly, over the summer, a new parish has been taking shape in the archdiocese.

While the established church communities were in the summer lull before the fast pace of fall began, Father John Kieran, armed with a map, a list of names and a Lithonia Post Office Box, was beginning a new parish in east DeKalb County. It is a process of gathering and inviting and searching for those people who will be the building blocks of a new community and for the right place to make that beginning.

The hidden work of the summer is beginning to bear visible fruit now.

Beginning on Sunday, Oct. 21, the parish will be able to celebrate Sunday Mass together at the First United Methodist Church of Lithonia, a 74-year-old church in the middle of the Lithonia community. The pastor, Dr. William Tyson, and the Methodist church community met and agreed to welcome the Catholic parish which was in search of a first place to gather for Sunday Mass. The Mass will be celebrated at 8 a.m.

“Once you start a Sunday Mass, you start registering people…start forming committees,” Father Kieran had mused earlier in the summer before the agreement had been reached. Until Sunday Mass starts, much of the work cannot begin to build the new parish and its own church.

The community is forming near the already established parishes of Sts. Peter and Paul in Decatur and Corpus Christi in Stone Mountain. The boundaries are Panola Road on the west, Redan and Deshon Roads on the north and the DeKalb County line on the east and south. Interstate 20 cuts through the parish territory and everything from geography to demographics and possible future commercial development had to be looked at in planning the first steps.

“You can look at the map and say, “There---there’s the middle point (of the parish),’” Father Kieran observed. “But that’s not the way it is.”

In fact, the study of the area indicated that growth is likely to come in the northern quadrant of the new parish, so that is where the buildings of the future will be located, rather than in the exact geographic center of the parish.

Again, discreetly over the summer, Father Kieran and archdiocesan property staff met with local realtors and searched for an appropriate piece of land for the building of a church. In some places, Father Kieran knocked on doors to inquire about vacant land. Recently, the archdiocese purchased 20 acres of land on Wellborn Road, about one-half mile south of the tiny stone Redan Post Office, for the future church. The property is in the midst of a rural area where much of the land is still used for farms or is underdeveloped.

However, there is growth taking place nearby and more is likely in the future.

In a new subdivision nearby called Great Oaks, about a half mile from the new church site, a temporary rector will be established in a new home. Father Kieran pointed out that the house will be designed with a basement where many meetings can be held. The location on a cul-de-sac will help to absorb the cars at the rectory site. Daily Masses will also be celebrated there.

Until the rectory is completed, Father Kieran is living at 1828 Taffeta Trail, in a private home made available by Corpus Christi parishioner Dr. Frank O’Connor. There he has established a Blessed Sacrament chapel and a daily Mass schedule and parishioners have begun to gather and help furnish and decorate this first home.

Home Masses have been celebrated during the summer in different neighborhoods that will be part of the new parish. On Wednesday evenings, different families hosted a home Mass and invited the Catholics nearby to come. After Mass there was talk of the hopes for the new parish, possible names and the most suitable place to center a church. Father Kieran has also spoken at Masses at Sts. Peter and Paul and Corpus Christi to inform those parishioners of the new parish and to invite them to take part in building the new community.

Still, there are misconceptions, Father Kieran said. “I’ve had several people amazed that we don’t have a church,” he said, reflecting the misconception some people have that the entire church and parish are built first and then people are invited.

Instead, Father Kieran emphasized, it is the people who come first, and their work and commitment which leads to the building not just of the church, but of the Christian community.