State Secretary's Report

As we embark on a New Year, we look ahead to new responsibilities, new challenges and new opportunities.

The Knights of Columbus has flourished for so long because it offers constant value to its members: fellowship, friendship, and doing good work for our communities. The Knights have been welcomed into new communities because it is not afraid to adapt and respond, to embrace different cultures and to hold firm to its core principles of Charity, Unity, Fraternity and Patriotism.

While the mission of the Knights of Columbus remains constant, we must always be open to the need for change. Part of our ongoing task as Knights is to stay aware of needs in our own Councils and the communities we serve and change our programming accordingly. Our membership is evolving and we are welcoming more and more new members who a decade ago would have never thought to join our Order. Our work is evolving, just as our communities' needs and our ability to address them are.

In a world where so much is in flux and so little can be predicted with certainty, we Knights cannot afford complacency. Challenges are constant, so are opportunities. Today, we need every Catholic gentleman in communion with the Church to become a Knight of Columbus, because in our diversity lies our strength.

As Knights of Columbus, we should not be content to let matters stay the way they have always been, whether in our Councils or in our communities. We are the one ones who ask, WHY? We are the ones with the desires to build a better future and we are the ones who must lead the way!

In the coming year, I ask all of you to "Lead the Way" to a better Indiana Knights of Columbus and better communities. Currently we have slightly over 32,000 Knights in the State of Indiana . If each of us would ask just one gentleman to join our Order and from that effort just 10% would actually become a Knight - that would equate to 3,200 new members. Just think of the how much more we can accomplish for our parishes, our priests and religious, our Councils and our communities with these new Knights.

In this past year, as I have met so many of you in my travels, I have become more and more confident we Knights are ready and able to "Lead the Way" and that the best years of the Indiana Knights are yet to come.