A Parish that Listens

One of the most important things we can do as a parish community is listen. As we continue our journey of renewal at Our Lady of the Rosary, I want to make sure that we are creating genuine opportunities to hear from the people who make up our parish. Because before we decide where we might go next, we need to take the time to understand where we are now.

Creating spaces to listen to you – the parishioners of Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Parish – is the primary reason we will shortly undertake the National Church Life Survey (NCLS).

The NCLS is a well-established survey used by churches across Australia to understand how people are experiencing their church community. It gives us an opportunity to step back from the day-to-day life of parish ministry and listen to a much broader cross-section of our community. We want to discover what it is actually like to be a parishioner here.

Do you feel welcomed? Do you feel that you belong? Are you growing in your relationship with Jesus? What helps you to live your Catholic faith? What makes it difficult? Do you feel connected to others in the parish? Do you feel that your gifts and contributions are valued? What do you appreciate most about Our Lady of the Rosary? And, importantly, where do you think there are opportunities for us to grow? I don’t want us to assume that we already know the answers to these questions.

Recently, we have seen many wonderful signs of life in our parish. We have welcomed new families, seen significant growth among children, young people and younger adults, celebrated First Communions, welcomed people through RCIA (teens and adults), developed new ministries, and continued to explore what it means to become a mission-focused parish. These are encouraging signs. But numbers, programs and activities only tell us part of the story. We also need to hear about people’s personal experience of parish life.

This is where the NCLS becomes particularly valuable. The survey is not intended to be a quick exercise that leads to a series of immediate changes. Nor are we going to complete the survey one week and announce the following week what we are going to do differently! Rather, I see the NCLS as the beginning of a deeper process of listening. The survey will help us to listen widely by identifying the things we need to understand better. It will help us recognise areas of strength, but also areas where there may be questions worth exploring further. Most importantly, it will help us ask better questions. Then, during 2027, I intend to build on what we learn through the survey by creating opportunities to listen deeply through face-to-face community listening sessions across our parish. These conversations will give us the opportunity to go deeper.

The survey might tell us, for example, that people experience something in a particular way. A listening session allows us to ask: Why is that? Tell us more. What would make a difference? What have we missed? In other words, the survey isn’t the end of the listening process. It is a platform for beginning a deeper conversation.

This is an important way for us to approach parish renewal. We don’t want to rush to solutions before we have properly understood the questions. We don’t want to assume that the loudest voices necessarily represent the whole parish. And we don’t want to make decisions based simply on what those of us involved in parish leadership happen to see. We want to listen broadly, carefully and prayerfully.

When will this happen? We’ll conduct the NCLS at all Masses – Currimundi and Little Mountain included – on 24/25 October.

On the weekend we undertake the NCLS, the time normally given to the homily will instead be set aside for parishioners to complete the survey. The survey will be completed on paper, and we will make provision to assist those who need help completing it. We want as many people as possible to have the opportunity to share their experience.

Whether you have been part of this parish for decades or have only recently begun attending, your experience matters. Whether you are deeply involved in parish life or simply come to Mass each weekend, your voice matters. And whether you have wonderful things to tell us or believe there are things we could do better, we want to hear from you.

Our parish mission is to be a vibrant community that actively accompanies people to encounter Jesus. If that is genuinely who we want to be, then we need to listen to how people are experiencing that mission among us. So please participate when the opportunity comes. Take your time. Be honest. Tell us what you really think. We may not have immediate answers. We may not immediately change anything. But we will listen. And through listening – first through the NCLS, and then through face-to-face conversations in 2027 – we hope to discern more clearly where the Lord is leading Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Parish.

Peace and love – Fr Josh