Parish Leaders from across the northeast of the Diocese gathered at St Patrick’s, Wangaratta on 19 March for the North Eastern Deanery Forum – a facilitated process of listening, reflection and speaking.
Following the earlier Forums in the other two deaneries, the North Eastern Deanery Forum focused on creating space for people to speak about their experience of parish life, to listen to one another with respect, and to connect with Chancery staff in a conversational way. Participants engaged in internal parish and inter-parish dialogue, sharing what in their communities gave them hope, and the concerns they have.
Not surprisingly, the hopes, concerns and ‘victories’ of parishes in the northeast reflected those of parishes in the Western and Goulburn Valley Deaneries: Shared hopes were the gifts of their parish priests, the relationship between the school and the parish, the vitality migrants bring to their communities, and a growing understanding of lay leadership and co-responsibility.
Key concerns were the aged profile of their congregations, financial sustainability, maintaining infrastructure, the number of priests relative to the distances between communities, interculturality and, for some, maintaining the identity of their worship centres within parishes.
There was a strong current of hope. The forum itself became an expression of connection; a reminder that each parish, no matter how distant, belongs to something larger. There was a clear willingness among participants to strengthen relationships, support one another, to find new ways of building connection across distance and to have more days like this.
Geoff Gowdie, Assistant Director of Mission and Pastoral Life based at the Chancery, said the forums were primarily designed to facilitate parishes talking to one another. “The desire for inter-parish dialogue has been a theme emerging consistently in previous years,” said Geoff. “Deaneries have been mainly priest-focused but haven’t been operating actively for some time. These new Deanery conversations involving priests and a cross-section of laity provide the potential to move future conversations into mission mode, even while grappling with difficult issues.”
A second aim of the forums was to build connections between parishes and Chancery staff. There were ten to twelve Chancery staff at each Forum, and they actively engaged in conversations at tables with priests and parishioners, and performed the valuable task of taking notes (so others didn’t have to), capturing the scope and richness of conversations in the smaller groups.
The notes from the table conversations were collected in addition to what was shared across the Forum gathering. We are currently collating all of that and will post it back to the participants. Then, this collation will be used in the preparation for the next Forum in June.
Geoff was pleasantly surprised by several people saying at the end of the day: ‘We need more days like this.’ Given that it’s quite a commitment for priests and parishioners to give a day to the forums, the positive assessment affirmed that the experience had met the initial modest aims.
With all three Deanery Forums complete, a path to new conversations is now open. A second round of Deanery Forums will take place in June, offering the next opportunity to deepen discussion and continue exploring the way ahead.
