When the Rev. Eric Augenstein came to New Albany’s Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in July to become its pastor, he recognized that his new parish’s faith was strong.

“It’s very spirit-filled. There are a lot of ministries and activities going on in the parish,” Augenstein said.

He arrived in the middle of a three-year parish plan called Envision, which identifies five areas the church wants to improve: adult-faith formation, youth ministry, young-adult ministry, child care and family connections.

The determination of its members has keyed successful progress of the Envision plan, Augenstein said.

“It’s really our parishioners who have taken leadership and ownership of these initiatives and making the plan succeed,” he said.

The co-coordinator of the Envision plan, Carl Koetter, said the parish has a young-adult program that was nearly nonexistent before the plan was put in place. A Wednesday night adult-faith formation class was created, too. Another initiative Koetter cited was the availability of child care at some of the parish functions and at the 11 a.m. Sunday service.

Koetter said the plan is progressing, and though some were worried about the transition to a new pastor, Augenstein’s arrival was not a hindrance.

“[Previous pastor] Father Paul [Etienne] was one of the innovators and heavily involved, but it didn’t miss a beat,” he said. “Father Eric was very supportive with ideas.”

In fact, Koetter credited some of the plan’s success to Augenstein.

“Father Eric has been very instrumental is helping to revive some of the committees that were struggling,” he said.

While Our Lady’s Catholic school was not incorporated in the Envision plan, programs have been added there as well.

Principal Terry Horton said the school added full-time day care for preschool students, and with a $10,000 grant from the Caesars Foundation of Floyd County, it updated the day care and extended-care facilities.

The school added new electives for students, too. Horton said Spanish is now offered to seventh- and eighth-grade students, and a beginning band program was added for fifth- and sixth-grade students.

Horton said 18 students took advantage of the band program and debuted in the school’s two Christmas program performances, which also featured second-, third- and fourth-graders.

Also, the school’s art studio was moved and expanded. Horton said that idea came from the school’s previous art teacher last year.

“The art room used to be upstairs in the typical classroom, and he had been eyeing the basement for some time,” Horton said.

He said since the day care and extended-care programs are located in the basement, those programs use the studio as well; when they renovated the space, they just put a divider between the two areas.

Just as Augenstein credited the parish’s work ethic, Horton said the changes were made possible because of proactive people within Our Lady.

“Part of it is having a staff and an education commission that looks ahead and looks for ways for our school to grow,” Horton said.

Any future plans for expansion rely a lot on the budget that will be finalized early next year, Horton said. However, she said faculty will remain focused on individual attention to standardized testing scores. According to scores released this month, Our Lady had a 95 percent passing rate school wide, Horton said.

Augenstein’s arrival signaled one last change for the school. At 29, he hardly fits most conceptions of priests. Horton said the new pastor’s youth adds another dimension for the students: “A lot of the kids just think it is so cool that he is young.”

Richard Gootee is a freelance journalist living in Floyds Knobs