CLUSTER PREPARATION PARISH MEETING 23 /10 /16

The following are points to take to the Cluster Meeting In Galashiels on

Tuesday 29th November 2016 7pm

Parish Cluster: Now Selkirk,Galashiels,Innerleithen, Peebles.

Selkirk and Galashiels are only a few miles apart,presently each have a priest.

St. Joseph’s is one of the most active and best supported parishes in the Cluster. However, it is geographically quite isolated from the Cluster (13miles).

Apart from the occasional distinct service e.g. Confirmation, this separateness makes it impractical for joint sharing on a regular basis with other members of the Cluster.

Cluster is too big for just one priest to serve.Should there be 2 priests to serve the Cluster it makes sense that St. Joseph’s Peebles has one dedicated priest.

(See notes from previous meeting on Strengths /Resources)

Decision making: Most parochial matters are ultimately the decision of the parish priest. Financeand Fabric are obvious examples but there are many other areas where the parish life is dependent on the priest’s agreement.

Looking ahead a few years, as the number of priests continue to decline, there will not be enough hours in the day for a priest to carry out all these traditional roles. The Church should foresee this and begin planning for greater devolved decision making.

Lay Leaders: The previous parish meeting referred to this. The meeting today explored this further. We took the view that if we accepted the decline in church goers as a fete accomplithen the decline would continue.

Rather we should be trying firstly to arrest the decline and then advancing a church on the move.To do this the diocese needs to invest in training Lay Leaders who will take responsibility for certain areas of parish life.These areas could include Administration, discrete liturgical services,pastoral services.

With this Responsibility, should come devolved Authority.These Lay leaders shouldnot need to constantly defer to a distant parish priest. To do so would dilute the vibrancy of our parish mission.

Parish Infrastructure: We wished to emphasise that presently we have a parish infrastructure whichcould flourish under a new style parish which includes the above ideas. Someexamples -

  • We have a part time paid administrator.
  • We have a Bereavement Team
  • We have a Neighbourhood Centre Team
  • We have a Parish Council
  • We have Liturgy Teams. IncludingtheChildren’s Liturgy Group. Supports young families.20 - 30 children attend on a regular basis. For the future we would want to build on such faith support for young families.This would need local Parish leadership support.

Sunday Mass must continue to be the core of our parish life. In the longer term to maintain a vibrant parish community, the Archdiocese and ourselves, must find a way of achieving these goals.

(Transport Arrangements to be made to allow as many as possible to attend the meeting in Galashiels)