Norcross -- To welcome Gwinnett County newcomers into their church community, parishioners of Mary Our Queen Mission on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard have created a program involving five areas of outreach.

The program includes home visits, potluck dinners with parishioners, letters to new residents, brochures in area hotels and apartment complexes, and greeters welcoming visitors to Mass.

Developed by parishioners Lidia and Richard Germano, the program was implemented last December with the support of Father David Dye, a welcoming committee and the parishioners of Mary Our Queen.

The program attempts to ease the lonely transition period for Catholics and other newcomers to the area. This transition is often a testing period for faith, the committee believes when Catholics who don't make a connection with a church may quit attending Mass and gradually lose their spiritual focus.

The program especially targets Catholics, according to Father Dye, and is designed to help people maintain their faith and to become active in the church. Germano hopes the program will also attract individuals who do not regularly attend any church; by making friends and becoming involved these individuals may discover the love of Jesus Christ. He also hopes that newcomers can eventually share their faith with a special sensitivity to other newcomers.

"Any time you minister to people coming into the area the church should make itself known, which is hard to do," Father Dye said, since parishioners meet in an industrial park location. "What we're also working on is a way to connect these people in a personal sort of way."

Despite these challenges, in its five months of operation the welcome committee has visited 50 new families and has had an average of eight new families join the church each month. After initial phone calls, members of the welcome committee visit an average of three out of five of the residents called. All newcomers to the parish receive a fruit basket as a welcome gift. One visitor told Germano, "This is the best program we've ever seen."

"It's a nice, warm relationship," Germano said. "You're talking about religion and God and the importance of Jesus in their lives."

Parishioners of Mary Our Queen enthusiastically support the program, he said, and five couples serve on the welcome committee. A goal of the committee it to get an accurate, regularly updated list of newcomers within the mission's zip code. Using these lists the plan to invite all these residents to Mary Our Queen through phone calls and welcome letters. They are also beginning to hold bimonthly potluck dinners in which a parish family, Father Dye, and a visiting family share a meal at a family's home.

The Germanos led a similar program for a year and a half in Carmel, N.Y. Upon moving to Atlanta they found Father Dye particularly open to this creative initiative. While some parishes already have successful welcoming activities, Germano hopes that the program will be an encouragement to those that do not.

As the welcome program expands, so will the size of Mary Our Queen. The mission owns 15 acres of property at the intersection of Corners Parkway and Crooked Creek Road in Norcross and hopes to begin a building project there in the near future.