At its first meeting of the year the Parish Pastoral Council welcomed two new members: Felicity McNeice and Ryan Greer. Both Ryan and Felicity bring a range of high level skills and experience to the Council, particularly in the schools area, and they are warmly welcomed.
The Council reviewed progress towards the goals we all agreed to in 2017 at our Parish Assembly. The Parish committed itself to five key areas of work: Social Justice, Community Building, Evangelisation, Fundraising and Youth and Young Adults. Overall, our assessment is that we are tracking well in achieving the goals we set, and this was reflected in the excellent submission from the parish to the Plenary Council. It involved many parishioners, covered a lot of interests and reflected the priorities of a large, multicultural parish. However, as the parish grows, changes and develops, the PPC can see that some of our
activities have to be reworked. For example, while the Youth Council has given a welcome voice to our young people of school age we believe that the young adults ministry has not been going well and we have put it in abeyance for twelve months while we try to build youth participation from the ground up. The appointment of Kyla Velasquez for this task is most welcome.
Our fundraising activities got off to a great start with the Disaster Relief appeal and reflects a tweaking of priorities towards social justice and community building. The PPC is committed to full reporting on the spending of monies for this purpose and will report throughout the year. We have decided not to have a big Christmas fete this year. Instead we will put on an ecumenical Christmas Carols event. We will still have the Multicultural and Games Evenings to celebrate our parish’s giant spirit of community and we will run a big raffle in the middle of the year as our major fundraiser. The priorities of the PPC this year will be largely practical as we will be building the grotto, starting the renovation of the church, offering practical support to our bushfire victims and building our relationship with our schools.
