On St. Matthews Street in the Village of Allouez, just across the Fox River from downtown Green Bay, St. Matthew Catholic Community has long served as a neighborhood parish where families worship together, learn their faith across generations, and reach out to neighbors near and far. The parish's front door opens onto weekend Masses, daily Masses through the week, and a Saturday afternoon Reconciliation line, and its programs reach from an elementary school shared with neighboring Resurrection Parish to a feeding program in Haiti and a diaper pantry for infants in Brown County. The parish often quotes Pope Francis: "The Church which 'goes forth' is a community of disciples who take the first step, who are involved and supportive, who bear fruits and rejoice." That vision shapes everything from the Wednesday-night Generations of Faith program to the parish's twelve-month outreach calendar.
Mass Schedule and the Saturday Livestream
St. Matthew keeps a steady rhythm around the Eucharist. Weekend Masses are celebrated Saturday at 4:30 pm and Sunday at 8:30 am and 10:30 am. The Saturday evening Mass is livestreamed on the parish YouTube channel, and recordings are uploaded to the parish Facebook page so the wider community can pray along at home. Weekday Masses are celebrated Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7:15 am, and Thursday at 8:30 am, when the Thursday Mass becomes a School Mass during the school year with Father Allouez Catholic School in attendance. Children's Liturgy of the Word is offered at the Sunday 10:30 Mass from September through May, when children ages four to ten are dismissed to hear the readings at their own level. Visitors arriving by car will find a parking lot off St. Matthews Street and Beaumont Street, and the Gathering Space near the sacristy keeps hearing devices for those who need them.
Reconciliation and the Weekly Round of Devotions
Reconciliation is heard each Saturday at 3:30 pm, an hour before the vigil Mass. The parish keeps several weekly devotions alongside the Mass schedule. The Rosary is prayed in the Day Chapel every Tuesday evening at 7:00 pm. Quiet Time with the Eucharist fills the chapel on Monday evenings from 7:00 to 8:00 pm. On the fourth Monday of each month the chapel becomes a Holy Hour with exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, prayed for the parish, the Diocese of Green Bay, and families. The weekly loose offertory is shared with twelve different local charities through the year, from Ecumenical Partnership for Housing in January to Love Life and Alexandrina in December.
FIVE More: Becoming an Active Catholic
A signature program called FIVE More, launched in December 2015, invites parishioners to add a little more of themselves to the four pillars of discipleship drawn from Matthew Kelly's "Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic": praying, studying, giving generously, and evangelizing. A family might commit to five more minutes of daily prayer, five more pages of Scripture, five more hours of service, or five more conversations about faith. The parish has distributed copies of several Matthew Kelly books, including "Rediscover Catholicism," "The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic," "Beautiful Mercy," "Resisting Happiness," "Perfectly Yourself," "The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity," and "Rediscover the Saints," to read and discuss together. The Prayer Process itself, a seven-step daily prayer built around gratitude, awareness, significant moments, peace, freedom, and intercession, is printed on laminated cards available in the Gathering Space and Parish Office.
Generations of Faith on Wednesday Nights
For families whose children attend public school, St. Matthew offers Generations of Faith, an intergenerational program that gathers on Wednesday evenings roughly twice a month. Dinner is served at 5:15 pm, and the program runs from 6:00 to 7:15 pm, with age-appropriate breakout sessions for elementary, middle school, high school, and adult learners. The year begins in early September and includes about nineteen gatherings. Some nights are worship focused, some activity focused, and some service focused; all are designed to help families encounter Jesus and become people of salt and light. If Green Bay public schools cancel evening activities, GOF is cancelled as well. Registration forms are available online, at the parish office, and in the Gathering Space, with fees paid by check made out to St. Matthew Religious Education.
Father Allouez Catholic School
St. Matthew shares its elementary campus with Father Allouez Catholic School, the early childhood through Grade 4 building that the parish operates with neighboring Resurrection Parish as part of the Green Bay Area Catholic Education System, known as GRACE. Resurrection houses the middle school campus for Grades 5 through 8. The school partnership began in 2016, when the schools from St. Matthew and Resurrection came together to form Father Allouez Catholic School, named for the French missionary who arrived in the Green Bay area in the seventeenth century. Sacramental preparation for school families takes place within the parish's broader Generations of Faith and sacrament-prep tracks.
Sacraments: Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, Marriage
Preparation for the seven sacraments runs through both the parish community and the home. Infant Baptism usually takes place after weekend Masses or during a group ceremony; first-time parents watch a baptism preparation DVD or a Busted Halo video, and at least one godparent must be a confirmed Roman Catholic. First Reconciliation is celebrated in December and First Communion on the first weekends of the Easter Season, with a combined $70 fee for both sacraments. Confirmation is typically celebrated in the fall of a teen's senior year, with a yearlong formation program in Grades 11 and 12 that culminates in a celebration Mass, in recent years celebrated jointly with Resurrection Parish.
Marriage preparation begins with the Diocese of Green Bay's Marriage in the Lord Seminar, followed by FOCCUS work with a married couple from the parish, and meetings with the priest or deacon who will preside. Music selections are coordinated with Anissa Willkom, the parish Director of Pastoral Ministry, Liturgy and Music, no later than two months before the wedding date. Couples who belong to another parish may complete their paperwork through that parish and have it forwarded. Those whose first marriage ended in divorce need an annulment before remarrying in the Church.
Anointing of the Sick and Pastoral Care Beyond the Walls
Communal celebrations of Anointing of the Sick are scheduled in the spring and fall during weekend liturgies, and individual anointings can be arranged on request. The Pastoral Team, made up of Father Bob Kabat, Deacon Bob Hornacek, Anissa Willkom, and Amy Weiss, visits parishioners in the hospital and at home, brings Holy Communion to those who cannot attend Mass, and supports families in times of loss.
The parish's pastoral care ministries stretch well beyond the church walls. The Prayer Shawl Ministry knits and crochets shawls to comfort those in need of solace. The Prayer Tree prays for special intentions. Sacred Heart Ministry takes Holy Communion to those who are homebound, in nursing homes, and in assisted living on the first Friday of each month. Care Ministry, sponsored by the Diocese of Green Bay, walks with people facing crisis, trauma, or personal loss. Hospital Ministry offers two roles, including bringing communion to patients and visiting fellow parishioners who are admitted.
Worship Ministry Behind Every Mass
St. Matthew's Worship Ministry draws on a long roster of lay volunteers. Greeters welcome worshippers at the inside entrance of the church. Ushers help with seating, the collection, and communion lines, and pass out bulletins at the end of Mass. Lectors proclaim the readings. Eucharistic Ministers, all of them confirmed Catholics, assist the priest with distributing the Body and Blood of Christ. Altar Servers, including girls, boys, and adults, support the priest at the altar. Sacristans prepare the sacred vessels and books. Musicians, Art and Environment volunteers, and Plant Care ministers each lend a different gift to the liturgy.
A Twelve-Month Outreach Calendar
Each month the loose offertory from weekend Masses is shared with a different local charity, in addition to ongoing support for the parish's year-round partner organizations. January goes to Ecumenical Partnership for Housing; February to the Cerebral Palsy Telethon; March to All Seasons Transformation House; April to St. Vincent de Paul; May and September to Feed My Starving Children; June to the Jack Washington Wonderful World Fund; July to Sleep in Heavenly Peace; August to Hands and Hearts with Haiti; October to St. Vincent de Paul; November to St. John's Ministries; and December to Love Life and Alexandrina. Beyond that schedule, the parish also partners year-round with St. Pat's Food Pantry on Green Bay's west side, the JOSHUA interfaith coalition, and an Outreach Endowment established through Project Matthew.
Local and Global Partners
Ecumenical Partnership for Housing is a collaboration of sixteen area churches and The Salvation Army that helps homeless families transition toward stability and self-sufficiency; St. Matthew supports the Ruth House and is represented on the EPH board by parishioner Joe Shefchik. Feed My Starving Children hand-packs meals for malnourished children around the world; St. Matthew is one of twelve Green Bay partner churches and joins the parish's MobilePack sessions each October. Hands and Hearts with Haiti is a multi-parish partnership rooted in mutual trust with St. Louis Parish in Mirebalais, supporting a goat program, microcredit loans, education from elementary through high school, and clean water projects, including a school building under construction in Noyau.
The St. Vincent de Paul St. Matthew Conference, founded on November 1, 1974 by parishioner Al Stary, serves families in need across St. Matthew, St. Mary of the Angels, and parts of Bellevue. Vincentians visit those in need in their homes, listen, and provide emergency assistance, all in strict confidence. Love Life is an ecumenical outreach serving low-income families with infants and toddlers up to age three across Brown County, providing diapers, layettes, gently used clothing, baby furniture, formula, and baby food through a network of volunteer-staffed distribution points, with an early-literacy extension called Love Learning. St. John Ministries supports the St. John the Evangelist Homeless Shelter through Sunday-evening volunteer slots from November through April, the Micah Center daytime resource center, and Wellspring, a daytime resource center for women in downtown Green Bay.
The Men's Club, Knights of Columbus, Cleaning Angels, and Hospitality
The St. Matthew Men's Club, a fraternal organization open to Christian men age 18 and older, meets the first Thursday of the month from September through May at 7:30 pm in the Father Allouez Catholic School cafeteria. Annual dues are $10. The club is widely known for its Annual Charity Wild Game Feed and has raised more than $500,000 for St. Matthew Parish, Father Allouez Catholic School, and other local charities. Summer brings Bullfrog baseball outings and the Harry LaTour Golf Outing and Steak Fry. Officers include Greg Simonson as president, Steve Lealou as vice president, Tom Schumacher as secretary, and Bob Olson as treasurer.
The Knights of Columbus Father Claude Allouez Council, founded on September 13, 1991, brings together about 108 Catholic men from St. Matthew and Resurrection parishes to serve widows, orphans, and the broader Green Bay community. Cleaning Angels keep the church beautiful through five rotating teams that clean on Friday or Saturday mornings. Hospitality volunteers set up and serve refreshments in the Gathering Space after every weekend liturgy and at special parish events. Young Neighbors in Action (YNIA), a parish service tradition since 2000, brings middle school and high school students together for a summer service week in the local community.
Summer Kickoff, SCRIP, and Supporting the Parish
Each year on the first Sunday in June, the parish holds its Summer Kickoff, a parish picnic with booyah, a bucket raffle, a petting zoo, an inflatable activity center, and live music. Proceeds are split between St. Matthew Buildings and Grounds and the Outreach Endowment. The parish also runs the SCRIP gift-card fundraiser, in which parishioners purchase scrip at face value and the parish earns a rebate usable for general parish needs or tuition credit at Father Allouez Catholic School. Online giving is handled through NetSimple, and a printed annual report covering each fiscal year from July 1 through June 30 is available at the parish office.
Pastoral Staff and Parish Councils
Father Bob Kabat, a priest of the Diocese of Green Bay, serves as pastor. A native son of Green Bay and a lifelong Packers shareholder, he previously served Holy Cross Parish in Kaukauna, St. Jude Parish in Green Bay, St. Mary Parish in Greenleaf, St. Paul Parish in Wrightstown, St. John the Baptist Parish in Seymour, and St. Sebastian Parish in Isaar, and spent thirty-five years on the Marriage Tribunal for the Diocese. He is joined by Deacon Bob Hornacek; Michael Westenberg, Director of Religious Education and Social Outreach; Anissa Willkom, Director of Pastoral Ministry, Liturgy and Music; and Amy Weiss in Pastoral Ministry.
The Finance Council and Parish Pastoral Council meet regularly with the pastor and trustees to steward the parish's finances and mission. Other committees include Buildings and Grounds, Justice and Human Concerns, Evangelization and Catechesis, and the Worship Committee. The parish office at 130 St. Matthews Street is open Monday through Thursday from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, and the doors of the church are open as often as the people inside them want to be.