Parish Vision

Parish Vision Update Week 1: Pledges

A huge heartfelt thank you for the amazing number of pledges made at our Parish Vision events. In total, so far, we have received pledges from 44 people

35 pledges of time

12 pledges of income

The team is working hard to review these all in detail and will be contacting the pledgers over the next few weeks. Please bear with us this will take time. Our aim is to have this completed by Pentecost.

Over the next 5 weeks you will hear from each of the 5 Parish Vision areas in turn. they will be sharing with you the feedback and great ideas received at the Parish event. This in turn will lead into Fr Raglans presentation at Pentecost.

Parish Vision Update Week 2: Pastoral Care

Thank you so much for the 52 post-its’ for Pastoral Care. These resulted in 21 ideas to help us offer practical and spiritual support in ways that truly reflect the diverse needs of all peoples. Having reflected on these we hear that the most urgent need is to focus, our initial energies on, working with and understanding, the needs of diverse groups within our Parish communities by offering the best welcome and support. We can only achieve this by through ‘collaboration’ and by partnering with others who offer ready-made solutions or excel in these areas. It was also very clear, across all areas of Parish Life, that communication is key; Open, honest, direct, and clear (one of our Parish Values) with the addition of regular please! After Pentecost we will be inviting people, who have already pledged help, and those who would like to, to join a ‘working-party’ to detail the requirements and develop the ideas we have in the following areas:

•  Diversity, inclusion, and enablement

•  Multi-cultural understanding

•  Community links and partnership working

•  Volunteer coordination

Underpinning all of this was a plea for opportunities to socialise; to come together to share,

support those in need and to also to have fun.

Vision Update Week 3: Liturgy and Prayer

Thank you for your responses (73 ‘post-its’). Some were suggestions for the way we organise particular details of our Mass. The rest applied to our 3 suggested priorities:

celebrating the range of prayer groups in our parish and how they can deepen our faith

giving a real welcome to those who join us in prayer, especially at Sunday Mass

making it practically possible for everyone to take part, whatever their situation

“Communication” is key, to help people to know what groups offer prayer or learning about the bible and our faith. This would particularly help those new to the Church.

We clearly value those who carry out the ministry of welcome. Suggestions were for more training in this - not because we’re bad at what we do, but that we all need to be renewed and inspired. 

There were requests for more social events to celebrate our community and the range of cultures from all over the world  in our Churches.

A more ambitious aim would be providing transport for those who cannot get to Mass on their own.

Different parish activities often link with each other. How do we show “Children, Young People and Families”  that they are an important part of our “Liturgy and Prayer”? For some it’s an achievement simply to have got themselves to Church. They might not have time to attend other events such as prayer groups; yet could we offer them help in their faith and prayer appropriate to their lifestyle?

Parish Vision Update Week 4: Encounter and Adult Formation

Thank you so much for your 62 ‘Post Its’ for Encounter and Adult Formation.

You gave us your ideas under each of the three ‘Key Priorities’ for this area of parish life:

• Alpha

• Sacramental Preparation

• Ongoing Formation

12 of you gave us lots of positive feedback about Alpha with a request to do more of it and potential follow on groups and to communicate it better through the parish churches!

A whopping 38 of you gave suggestions about ongoing formation for spiritual growth in the form of:

• Study / discussion groups (Bible study, book clubs, apologetics / defending the faith)

• Talks (visiting speakers, bible topics, current issues, church history, interviews)

• Retreats and pilgrimages (local and beyond, silent, Ignatian, RCIA focussed)

• Prayer groups (More please!)

• Formal programmes (such as Invited / Sycamore / Word on Fire material)

The remainder of you talked about the need for these events to be social to foster spiritual relationships with others, to be inclusive for all communities within our parishes and for ecumenical dialogue wherever possible. 

Lastly you highlighted the need for strong communication of all that is taking place.

Thank you too for your pledges for Encounter and Formation, after Pentecost we will be in touch!

Parish Vision Update Week 5:  Youth, Family and children

We are grateful for the very significant level of engagement we received over this topic with over 80 post its.

We received 19 post-its on our priority area of youth work.

These made suggestions for how we may better engage with our schools, how we may fund raise for and develop youth ministry and how we might improve sacramental preparation in the parish. There was a general concern in this section about the level of engagement from the older end of “youth” including those in their early twenties and a challenge about how we modify homilies to meet the more discussion-based approach of our youth. Our emerging priority in this area is to build a youth fund that will allows us to put on more events for our young people and hopefully employ a youth worker/chaplain.

We received 16 post-its on our priority area of children and youth focused liturgies.  

These made suggestions for how we might better support the liturgy through server training and having child-friendly missalettes available. They also touched on how we might make more use of special days and outdoor masses. There were challenges about whether the Mass was really appropriate for children and young people due to its structure, formality and the short time allowed for children’s liturgy. There were also many comments about the need for anything we do to be regular rather than occasional. Our emerging priority in this area is to review our regular liturgies and consider whether some of them can be dedicated more fully to serving our youth, family and children.

We received 29 post-its on family social and spiritual events. Most of these proposed types of events we could put on. There were challenges raised in this area about how we build total involvement of home-school-church. There was also a challenge as to whether our overall focus on family/youth was wrong and we need to be more tailored in serving fathers. Our emerging priority in this area is to ensure there are social events across all our churches.

We also received 16 post-its that didn’t fit neatly into our priority areas but instead proposed two other areas. First, there were 10 suggestions that could broadly be called “bring-back things we have lost.” This included a number of comments about the youth club in Burgess Hill and more child-centric liturgies at Haywards Heath. Our emerging priority in this area is to look at how we can bring back parent-catechesis before children start on the First Holy Communion programme.

Second, 6 post-its talked about the need to engage children and young people in charity work and in many ways bridges the gap to our other over-arching theme of Pastoral Care. We are aware of areas of parish life which do bridge this gap, for example our scout group. This whole discussion feels like a priority in its own right.

Over the next few weeks we will finish discerning whether these five priorities are the right ones and consider what our capacity constraints, as expressed in the many generous pledges we have received, might mean in terms of how many of these and in what priority order we move forwards.

Pentecost: Parish Vision Update

A summary of what has happened so far, from Fr Raglan: