Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2008 / Pastor adds ‘festival game creator’ to his role as a shepherd
Pastor adds ‘festival game creator’ to his role as a shepherd
by Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published September 26, 2008
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Kristin Lukowski | The Michigan Catholic
Fr. Kean’s game Bouncin’ Racers features a car bouncing off bungee cords. The prize is determined by where the car rolls to a stop. |
Taylor — A rubber frog goes flying across the tent when the mallet lands just right. A bowling pin perched on a bucket waits to be knocked down by a bowling ball hanging on a cable. A car bounces off two bungee cords before coming to rest in a lucky spot.
Those games and a few others are the brainchildren of Fr. James Kean, pastor of St. Alfred Parish in Taylor. He’s used his own hands and tools to make games for the kiddie tent for his parish festival, held earlier this month, adding one or two to the collection each year so the parish doesn’t have to rent them.
For those who know Fr. Kean, a friendly, high-energy priest who greets his parishioners by name and doesn’t hesitate to get down on his hands and knees to play with his two St. Bernard-mix puppies, it might not surprise them that he often uses his days off for small repairs around the parish. He draws on his experience growing up on a farm in St. Clair County — “You end up grabbing the power tools and making things when you need to,” he says — to fix what he can.
He shows off a wood block he put together to keep his desk lamp attached to his desk, after the original holder broke.
“It’s not pretty, but it works,” he said. “If I see a problem, I grab a piece of wood and throw it together.”
His challenge after coming to the parish, he said, was finding his own role in the parish festival and being of help to what was already going on. As a leader, he got the various talents working together, but also wanted to work alongside the people, too.
He gets ideas for his games in both likely and unlikely places — he’ll see a game at another festival and be inspired to make a similar version, or have a vision by looking at a random object. For example, after looking at a koi pond, he was inspired to make it into a kind of roulette wheel, with color-coded bars determining which prize to give a player when the ball stops spinning.
He tries to be creative making the games, using his hand tools and peg board in the parish garage, and puts in the major work in the last month or so before the festival. He has parishioners he can turn to for help with the things he doesn’t have experience with, like welding.
Fr. Kean said that as a priest, it can be challenging to find a deeper meaning to the experiences of life — which is similar to making carnival games out of everyday objects, too. Plus, the people of his parish enjoy seeing the new games come to life bit by bit in the garage as he works on them, “Wondering, where are you going with this? — kind of like my homilies,” he laughed.
Parish secretary Jackie Slaviero said the games Fr. Kean makes are the ones that the children stand in line for in the kiddie tent. They get a kick out of playing games made by their own pastor, she said. And, other parishes have asked to borrow them, she added.
“They’ve taken on kind of a life of their own,” she said.
Slaviero said Fr. Kean works with parishioners in other aspects of the festival too, like making signage and helping with the raffle. “He does a good job,” she said. “He’s a handyman.”
And although a parish festival is fun and games, Fr. Kean also sees it as a microcosm of a parish in general, he said — an abundance of volunteering, teamwork and activity, service from the people working toward an event, and building up families and relationships. And, of course, the responsibility of the pastor to pray for good weather.
“It’s amazing what parishes go through when they have a festival,” he said. “There’s a sense of satisfaction about the job that’s done.”
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