Parish Service Day

Friends, this weekend at all Masses, we celebrate our second annual Parish Service Day. This celebration comes at the end of National Volunteers Week, during which we thank and acknowledge all who volunteer in service of our mission at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Parish. Our parish simply could not operate without the sacrifice and generosity of volunteers, and so—from the least visible to the most—and on behalf of every single parishioner, I thank you for your service.

Our parish’s mission is to be a vibrant community that actively accompanies people to encounter Jesus. This simple and catchy phrase, which I hope is beginning to roll off your lips as readily as you hear it from me, is—and should be—the measuring stick for everything we do and the basis upon which we offer ourselves in service of Jesus (who is our Head) and His Body (which is His Church). This weekend, each worshipping parishioner has an opportunity to commit themselves to service in our parish—regardless of age, mobility, education, or faith.

Last weekend, our parish hit a new attendance high, with 1,133 people celebrating Mass. It’s worth noting that, prior to 2025, our historical Mass count averaged around 950 people each weekend. Since Cyclone Alfred in early March, we have not dipped below 1,000! While Mass numbers are not the only measure of how we’re doing as a parish, they do offer an indication of our strength in the key areas of Hymns, Homilies, and Hospitality. (Hospitality includes both our intentional approach to welcoming people before Mass and connecting with them afterward over a drink and a bite to eat.) It should come as no surprise that, together with the Community Life Leadership Team, I am continuing to work toward having both trained welcomers before Mass and drinks/nibbles after Mass every weekend.

Coupled with the growth in our Mass numbers, our expanding parish leadership structure is deliberately designed to support more people getting involved. In this Year of Engagement, we have implemented a Pastoral Leader for each of our six main Masses (noting that our two retirement communities of Little Mountain and Currimundi are exempt). Each Pastoral Leader is receiving leadership coaching and has been charged with the responsibility of building a leadership team of their own, reflecting our existing Ministry Leadership Teams. In practice, this means each Mass community includes individuals with whom each of the six Ministry Leadership Teams can communicate. For example, each Mass community needs someone the Community Life Leadership Team can liaise with, and someone the Children & Families Team can communicate with.

While for many parishioners, ‘leadership teams’ and such may seem distant or unrelated to their day-to-day faith lives, our growing structure is designed to foster both unity in our parish and clear, effective communication and decision-making. This weekend, as we celebrate our second annual Parish Service Day, I invite you to see yourselves and your community as part of one Body, one Parish. “We are many parts, but we are all one body,” as Paul says to the Corinthians (1 Cor 12:12). Separateness and independence between communities may have been promoted in our parish in the past, but in this time, unity is utterly necessary—not just for our survival, but for our flourishing.

Once again, to those who are already volunteers in any ministry, I say thank you. In the years ahead, it is my vision that Parish Service Day becomes the time when people commit to serving in a new ministry for the following 12 months. This vision will become a reality as we create the necessary structures to onboard and train people immediately. For example, new lectors (readers at Mass) will receive training in the weeks following Parish Service Day. Until then, I ask those who are already serving to please continue in your ministry as we do our best at the parish office to process new volunteers as quickly as possible. May God bless us with an abundance of volunteers who joyfully say yes to God’s invitation in this Year of Engagement.

Peace and Blessings,

Fr Josh