Star Council

What a great year the Texas State Council had in 2023-2024. A new record for the Order was set by Texas having 208 Star Councils! In addition, there were 30 Columbian Awards, 70 Founders’ Awards and 45 Fr. McGivney Awards.

We were blessed with great Grand Knights, Fiannacial Secretaries, District Deputies, Diocesan Deputies and Committeemen who worked very hard down the stretch to help councils make it over the finish line. There are so many "trip points" a council can stumble on down the stretch. We were able to catch most of those. In short, if a council really wanted to make Star Council last year, I believe they had every opportunity to do so.

I think our greatest success though was in replacing the concept of "award" in the Star Council process. The Star Council process is a quality control procedure, encouraging all councils to exhibit the behaviors of successful councils, thus becoming successful in the process. It's much more than your name on a plaque.

I was encouraged at the State Convention to have several GKs come up to me and tell me they took that lesson from last year's Organizational Meeting and ran with it. Where they used to have 10 men at their business meetings, they now had 40. Where they used to have the same 5 guys show up for every activity, they now had 20.

If we are helping make our councils better examples of Fr. McGivney's vision, then that is a much greater accomplishment than the number 208.

Want more for your council this Fraternal Year? Consider setting Star Council was your goal and watch what happens.

And yes, we can do better this year. Way too many councils didn't get serious about Star Council until too late in the year. So many were one member short. Several submitted their incomplete SP-7 on June 30 at 10 PM. And don't even start me on Safe Environment Training.

Start now on focusing on the Star Council requirements to start driving success. This should be another great year for Texas.