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Towards a Parish Visioning Statement 2034

A recap: On Saturday, 18 May 2024, the eve of Pentecost, forty-five parishioners attended a parish workshop with the aim of looking forward in time to what sort of parish we would like to be in ten years’ time. From earlier consultation with our leadership group, the PLDT, we had devised two guiding or framing questions for our journey:

  1. How can we work together to continue building a welcoming community of faith that draws people in and provides a sense of belonging? 

  2. How can we foster a deep spirituality that feeds our people and calls us in care and outreach to our community and our world?

From this consultation, the Discernment Group identified five areas of parish service needing development if we are to address the framing questions:

  • Worship and faith formation

  • Welcome, hospitality, and belonging

  • Leadership and governance

  • Pastoral care

  • Community outreach.

 Over five weeks of Lent, Mass-going parishioners responded to questions around these service areas.

This brought us to the Pentecost Eve workshop where attendees were split up into the five service areas and discussed the material gathered thus far and came up with ten sentences to describe their service area. These were shared among the larger group for voting. From that voting, that information has now been formed into a narrative that describes a vision of our ideal parish in 2034. Please click HERE for a copy.

Copies are also available in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French from the office.

Next Steps: For the rest of 2024, the Discernment Group and PLDT will develop future scenarios to help us understand the resources and constraints we will need to consider on our journey to becoming the parish we want to be by 2034. In 2025, we’ll make concrete plans for each service area and invite parishioners to commit their gifts and talents to continue building our desired welcoming community of faith that draws people in and provides a sense of belonging and fosters a deep spirituality that feeds our people and calls us in care and outreach to our community and our world.

With Lamps Ablaze

I have come to bring fire on the earth and how I wish it were blazing already. Luke 12:49

For 2023 and beyond, Archbishop Mark Coleridge took time to set down the Apostolic priorities of the Brisbane Archdiocese, known as With Lamps Ablaze (PDF). Conceived and developed under the influence of the Holy Spirit, who is moving in the Church in new and surprising ways, the Apostolic priorities are also the distillation of the wisdom His Grace has gleaned during his 11 years as Archbishop of Brisbane, plus almost four decades of ministry.

The priorities are termed ‘apostolic’ rather than ‘pastoral’ or ‘missionary’ and this is intended specifically to invest all of us who form the body of Christ as stakeholders. While the bishops are the successors of the apostles, it is no less true that the whole Church, the community of all the baptised, is ‘apostolic’. That sense of inclusiveness is foundational to these priorities, and what each of them seeks to further promote both individually and as a collective.

The Church needs to be ever on guard against the danger that, whilst it has received the gift of truth from Christ, it will always be speaking that truth without pause, and never stop to listen to its audience. For true dialogue and communion, listening must come before the speaking, or we risk speaking in ways that people simply do not understand or answering questions which no one is asking.

These priorities, therefore, are offered to the Archdiocese as a whole; lay people, religious and clergy, so that each of us has a chance to reflect more deeply, to consider what resonates most within us personally, and then to discern what actions might be jointly undertaken in response to them.

Walking Together to be the Church of the Future

In the past few years, Catholics have been introduced to the word “synodality”. It comes from the Greek preposition συν (with) and the noun όδός (path). It denotes following a path together. It is walking with, travelling with, and accompanying. It is lay faithful, priests, and bishops journeying together. In terms of Catholics gathered in a Synod, it refers to “listening” to one another through “spiritual conversations”. As Pope Francis explains:

“A synodal Church is a Church which listens, which realises that listening “is more than simply hearing”. It is a mutual listening in which everyone has something to learn. The faithful people, the college of bishops, the Bishop of Rome: all listening to each other, and all listening to the Holy Spirit, the “Spirit of truth” (Jn 14:17), in order to know what he “says to the Churches” (Rev 2:7). 

Since 2021, the Catholic Church around the world has been preparing for the ‘Sixteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of the Bishops’ with its theme of: “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission”. On Wednesday, 4 October, the First Session opened in Rome and will run to 29 October; the second session will open in October 2024. The theme of this synod sets the tone for this gathering. Pope Francis has indicated that this is not a parliament with winners and losers but rather an attempt to discern how the Church can better fulfil its mandate to preach the good news of Jesus in every place and culture for the benefit of all God’s people. That cannot happen without honest discussion about present challenges and opportunities. Everyone will not have the same list of concerns or the same sense of what is working and what is not, what needs to change and what needs to stay the same. 

What Does a Synodal Church Look Like? 

American Cardinal Robert McElroy has centred on eight adjectives that Pope Francis has used to describe a synodal Church. The cardinal said that synodality or a synodal Church: 

  • points to the reality that the whole of the people of God are journeying together; 

  • demands a profound stance of authentic listening from every believer who seeks to participate in and contribute to the life of the Church; 

  • is continually rooted in listening to the word of God and celebrating the Eucharist that is the source and summit of the Christian life; 

  • is a humble and honest Church; 

  • seeks inclusion; 

  • demands a participative Church where co-responsibility flourishes; 

  • is a missionary Church; and 

  • is a discerning Church.      

The Pope asks us to pray for this process taking place in Rome, that the church may adopt listening and dialogue as a style of life at every level, allowing herself to be guided by the Holy Spirit. You can visit the Vatican website: www.synod.va for a daily summary of the synod’s activities.

Discerning Our Way Forward

May 2023

In 2021, the Archdiocese began discussing what the local Church in Melbourne might look like in the future, which was framed as re-imagining clusters of parishes as Mission Communities. In response to the archdiocesan invitation, our parish has developed a process for discerning our future, which we call ‘the parish roadmap’. In the first phase of the roadmap members of the Parish Leadership and Development Team were interviewed to explore what they see as the most burning issues that the parish will have to face over the next ten years. The following is a brief summary of the key issues that emerged from the interviews. The full Issues Report can be found below

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