What You're Signing Up For

A Warriors Mass is a short, early weekday Mass for men who start work before the parish's regular Mass times. It runs about 15 minutes, full rite, spoken, no music. Confession runs from 5:00 a.m. when a priest is available. A lay team runs everything except the sacraments: setup, readers, servers, hospitality, promotion, and carpools. As founding leader, you're the person who makes that lay team exist and keeps it running.

The Founding-Leader Commitment

• Build a personal list of men to invite, starting with your own circle: coworkers, parish contacts, fellow tradesmen.
• Log every invitation and its status (contacted, interested, signed up) in the shared tracking sheet, until the app's own outreach-tracking feature ships.
• Follow up with everyone on your list every week.
• Call or text anyone on your list who signed up for a Mass and then missed it.
• Show up yourself, every time.

The Weekly Rhythm

When	What to Do
Monday	Review your list. Follow up with anyone who didn't respond the prior week.
Midweek	Send a reminder to everyone signed up for the coming Mass.
Mass morning	Be there. Greet men by name.
After Mass	Report attendance and any problems to Chris.

How to Approach Your Pastor

Ask for a short meeting and bring a written proposal. The Pastor Proposal document is the model to adapt. Cover the same ground it does, in this order:

Step	Cover
1. What	you're proposing: the Mass format, confession, hospitality, and carpools, all in one paragraph, before anything else.
2. When	a specific first date, and how the exact time will be set (ask every man who signs up when he needs to be at work, then set the time from that).
3. Who	the celebrant and a named backup for every date; a lay team of 6–8 who unlock, set up, serve, and lock up, so the priest only has to arrive, celebrate, and leave.
4. Sustainability	This is what most pastors ask about first, so lead with it once you're past the basics: priests share the load across a rota, no date goes on the calendar without a backup, the laity carries everything but the altar, and you'll report back after every Mass.
5. A review point	Offer one up front, after a set number of Masses or after a season like Advent, instead of an open-ended commitment.
6. A specific ask	Approval for a first date, help naming a celebrant and backup, and anything else he thinks the Archdiocese needs from you.

How to Recruit Priests for the Rota

Ask each priest you approach two direct questions, and write down the answers. You'll need them if this ever needs the Archbishop's support:

Setting Up the Hospitality Team

Start with 2–3 people: coffee, a grab-and-go breakfast, setup, and cleanup. Confirm your budget and food source before your first date. Run a dry run the day before the first Mass, and set up morning-of for every date after that.

Volunteer Screening

The Archdiocese of Vancouver's Safe Environment Policy for Archdiocesan and Parish Volunteers (Policy #431, updated June 1, 2016) governs who on your hospitality team needs formal screening, including a Police Record Check. Under that policy's own risk table, Mass itself and “large gathered event” generally sit in the Low/Medium risk column, and mandatory Police Record Checks are reserved for named high-risk roles. A coffee-and-breakfast team serving adult men is not on that named list, but the policy doesn't address hospitality teams directly, so treat this as our best reading of it. The policy's own instruction is “if uncertain of the risk level, screen as if it is high risk,” so bring your specific hospitality roles to your parish's actual Screening Coordinator and let them make the call. Priests and deacons are screened by the Archdiocese directly, so you don't need to verify that yourself for a visiting rota priest.

The forms you'd need if screening applies already exist. Your parish's Screening Coordinator has them. There's no new paperwork to invent.

Two Questions With No Answer Yet: Ask Your Parish Office

Nobody has confirmed two things that matter before you run a hospitality program:

• Food safety for serving coffee and breakfast to a group.
• Facility or event insurance for a lay-run gathering on parish property.

Gating Checklist: Run This the Wednesday Before Every Date

Check	What Has to Be True	If It Isn't
Celebrant	A priest is confirmed for this date	Move to the named backup
Backup celebrant	A named backup is confirmed	If both fail, cancel and text everyone signed up
Building access	Someone is confirmed to unlock the church by 5:00 a.m.	Cancel
Confession	Only offered if a priest can hear it from 5:00 a.m.	Mass runs without confession
Hospitality	Team assigned and confirmed for this date	Mass runs without hospitality
Setup, readers, servers	Lay team of 6–8 confirmed	Reduce roles. Don't cancel over this alone
Mass time	Start-time sign-up data reviewed, time locked at 5:15 or 5:30	Default to 5:30 until enough data exists
Notification	A cancellation text can go out to everyone subscribed	Fall back to leaders calling their own lists
Approval on record	Pastor or Archdiocese approval covers this specific date	Cancel