Father O'Brien began the meeting with a blessing for our Parish Pastoral Council. This was our first meeting of the new year and we were fortunate to have Sister Maryann Doyle with us. Sister acted as the facilitator of the processing work we needed to do with the information gathered from our June 18 listening session. We also welcomed our four new Parish Council members: Rose Mary Feeney; Margaret Kinsella, George Clisham and Rick Letham.

Sister Maryann described the process by beginning with the number of people that attended the Listening session. It was a representative group of about sixty people. Currently there are approximately 1800 households within the parish. So we begin with the information and ideas expressed by some of our parishioners. This information has already been consolidated into two categories. Sister suggested we begin by reviewing the mission of our parish. We then should discern, pray and listen to God in-order to identify our direction and work out our priorities. We know we cannot do all things and so we looked at what we might do first. And, the most important action is to communicate to the parish members what we are hoping to focus our energies on. Invite people to come forward to work on these initiatives. Communicate our direction, timeline, and what might come in future years.

The Parish Council members worked in small groups and each group was asked to recommend no more than three major initiatives at each table. Each person worked separately and then shared their ideas at each table. We then shared whatever consensus we arrived at with the larger group. The ideas from each of the groups were very similar and those were described in categories. Listed below were our categories:
1. Faith Formation/Adult Education
2. Evangelization/Outreach
3. Social Justice

Our task now is for each person to brainstorm on how to determine what we are already doing within these categories. Next, determine what specific ideas we have to add to this topic. We must build on what we already have in place. We must always keep in mind that we are all trying to do what God wants us to do. We are reminded that if we are open to His 11 and are willing to listen, things will fall in place.

We ask that each of our council members take this task of brainstorming as a homework assignment to be delivered at our next Parish Council meeting on Tues. October 28, 2003 at 7:30 PM at the Rectory.

Our next Parish Council meeting will be November 18, 2003 at 7:30 PM.