Fr Josh – Front-Page Reflection

Flocknote Sign-up September 

Friends, we are one week into our four-week Flocknote Sign-up September series and the most common question/sentiment I’m hearing from people around the parish is, “Why do I need to do this?” Please read on.

We are a diverse parish with many Mass communities across different geographical areas, and there is much in the way of giftedness in our diversity. Within this diversity, however, is vitally important that we cultivate opportunities to exercise unity and belonging. I deliberately use the word ‘vitally’ because its Latin etymology, vita, means ‘life’. Our life and growth, both as a parish, and communities within the parish, therefore, depends and will depend more and more on the exercise of unity and belonging. We need only look to the age demographics of our worshipping communities to realise that if we do nothing, the only growth will be in our average age and the solidification of the status quo. Now you might read this and think, “Well that’s a bit pessimistic Fr Josh,” but I encourage your reflection of how membership works in any organisation.

Perhaps the two greatest challenges facing Catholic parishes today are connectedness (both individually and as a community within the parish) and engagement. What do I mean by this? Connectedness within a worshipping community and parish is what people experience with other people and the parish. It is intimately connected (pun intended) with the deep personal experience of belonging and while many people do experience belonging, many don’t – and so connectedness is clear and ever-present challenge, regardless of the size of communities.

Engagement speaks to the curious phenomenon that we can be part of a worshipping community by virtue of our presence at Mass, but not engaged in any other way. Engagement is what people experience when they commit to serving in a ministry, sacrificial giving, and/or buy-in to our parish’s mission and vision. Insofar as we are called to imitate Jesus in our Christian lives, engagement is an opportunity to give more of ourselves when we experience growth and transformation as a result of encountering Jesus.

While Flocknote does not directly solve these two challenges (and I certainly do not claim it to be a silver bullet), it does give us the dual opportunity for people to name the community to which they belong, and for our team (in the parish office) to more effectively communicate with you as an individual, as a worshipping community, and as one unified parish community. Indeed, a significant challenge I experience on a personal level as your parish priest is how to draw 1000 worshipping parishioners together under the banner of a unified purpose! O how I desire to communicate personally/individually with every single parishioner – for this is the nature of the love I have for you!!

At the moment – and to keep you in the loop – I have manually imported our existing eNewsletter database into the Flocknote Parish eNews group. For those people, this means that you have the beginnings of a Flocknote profile. Over the next week you will receive an email from [email protected] – please note that it may go to your junk email folder until you mark the sender as safe. In this email I will invite you to update your profile with more information such as phone number, address, birthday etc – but most importantly, to name your worshipping community. I thank you in advance for your openness to creating more connectedness and engagement in our parish. If you have any questions or even push-back, please talk to Fr Francis, Fr Gerard or myself either before or after Mass. This, in and of itself, is an important indicator of connectedness and engagement.

Peace and blessings, Fr Josh