The Parish Pastoral Council (PPC) presented their report to the parish last Monday evening. This comprehensive report is provided below. The six outgoing PPC members were thanked for their contribution to the parish.

Several projects, new initiatives and ways of improving our parish were proposed to the PPC for addressing this year. As the PPC is currently being renewed, parishioners were encouraged to go forward for selection. Nomination Forms are available in the church this week-end or from the Parish Office and should be returned by 7th February.

Please note that during the PPC report, reference is made to "Holy Redeemer Parish Management Group Newsletter 2005", printed copies of this Newsletter was available to those attending the Parish Assembly. The pages refered to by the PPC report are the centre pages of the Newsletter, a PDF document with these pages is available for download by clicking here or from the link at the end of the report. As the file size of the complete Newsletter is very large (over 55MB) only the front cover and centre pages are provided in the PDF file, anyone who wishes to see a printed version of the Newsletter should contact the Parish Office.

Report to Parish - Monday, January 25th 2010

Good evening everyone.

I'm delighted to add my words of welcome to you to our assembly this evening. I'm particularly delighted and indeed privileged to speak to you this evening at what is an important juncture for our parish. It is the first formal assembly meeting under our new parish team of Enda, Colin and Joseph. It is also the occasion on which 6 of our current PPC team reach the end of their terms of office. I'll speak more about that later. It is also the final milestone in our parish plan - our 5 Year Focus plan which the PPC published in 2005. My main task this evening is to report back to you on what has been achieved within that plan.

By way of short preamble, though, let me take a moment to remind you of how we came to establish our PPC here in Holy Redeemer. The structure was initially recommended by a Long Term Planning team established by John O'Connell in 2002 to look at longer term structures within the parish. This group consisted of 6 parishioners, facilitated by Donal Harrington. The recommendations of this group were endorsed by a parish assembly in early 2003.

Although when we set up our structure here, we used the term Parish Management Group, that's because we were slightly ahead of the diocesan mandate for Pastoral Councils which only emerged in detail in 2004. However, we quickly realised that our ideals were equivalent to those specified by the diocese for PPCs and so we changed our name to demonstrate our compliance and adherence to those principles. The early workings of the PMG were facilitated by Donal Harrington, who brought invaluable experience to the table having worked on similar projects with other parishes. Indeed, when we established our local guidelines for our PPC, they were modelled on guidelines provided by Donal from 3 other parishes in the diocese with which he had worked. So we moved forward with our structure in full confidence that what we were doing was in line with the wishes of the diocese. These principles were recently presented and re-iterated to the parish by Sr. Anne Francis Carroll late last year, as part of an information meeting for anyone interested in the work of a PPC.

5 Year Plan:
Let me begin with the 5 year plan. (Show 2005 Newsletter). You will all have received a copy of this plan 5 years ago, delivered to your home, or perhaps you picked up a copy here in the church. It was constructed as a roadmap for our parish, and to give some structure to the work of the newly-formed Parish Pastoral Council. Within the PPC itself, we subdivided into a number of areas in order to provide more focus to our work. These are reflected in the various elements of the plan.

But who really formulated this plan? Well, it wasn't the PPC working alone. It was you, all of us together, as parishioners of Holy Redeemer. The inspiration and the ideas behind this plan came from the Consultation Meeting held in October 2004 between the PPC and the parish. At that meeting, the PPC presented a proposed vision for the future of our parish. This vision was resoundingly endorsed by our community. The ensuing discussion uncovered many areas, which were clearly of importance to us as a faith community. The PPC took away this input, and from it forged our 5 year plan. It was launched in April 2005 as part of a PPC-organised celebration of involvement in our parish, and was the subject of a follow-on assembly on Nov 20th 2006.

I'd like to take a few moments now to remind you what we set out in our plan, and to comment on what I believe has been achieved (Show centre pages of 2005 Newsletter).

Our Parish Vision:
Taking all the inputs we received, we tried to work them into a vision of what our parish would look like in 2010. This vision was embodied in the motto: "A faith community taking responsibility for its future." We were careful to add a few caveats: "As with all ideals, the picture is subject to change and develop as we work towards it. Some of the ideas will work and may even develop beyond our dreams. Some ideas will fail. Such is the nature of things."

Our Parish Community in 2010:
We envisioned a smaller, yet vibrant and forward thinking faith community. A parish hungry for ownership and responsibility. Today, our community is marginally smaller, as measured by the numbers attending weekend Masses. It is certainly not as small as we may have envisioned 5 years ago. We are blessed to still have a team of 3 priests working among us, so the forecasted reduction in numbers of priests has not impacted us quite as soon as we thought it might, though I'm sure it is only a matter of time before it does. These are all positive things, and indicative that Holy Redeemer is a very vibrant parish. This is evidenced by the number of individuals involved on a voluntary basis among the 45 or so groups working in our parish. When we counted them a few years back we only came up with 33. So there's some growth going on in our vibrant parish!

Youth:
By far the biggest area of concern expressed to us in Parish Assemblies over the years has been the area of youth, the question being what should we be doing to help and encourage our younger parishioners. We envisioned an enthusiastic core of young people active in the parish, with strong links from the parish to the schools. Ambitiously, we envisioned that our young people would have somewhere to gather. What has been achieved? Well, through the efforts of several concerned parishioners, a youth choir has been established and plays at the 7.30pm Mass each Sunday. Not only that, but it is now self-sufficient with its own leadership. If you have not heard them yet, I encourage you to do so. They have great energy and bring a new perspective to music in the Mass. When we envisioned somewhere for young people to meet, the thought was maybe we could acquire a room somewhere in Bray for that purpose. However, with great credit to those who dared to dream a bigger dream, we now have a fabulous state-of-the-art youth centre right here on the parish campus. This project became so big that those running it broke away from the PPC to concentrate fully on bringing it to fruition. I pay great tribute here to Mary Ashall and Leonie Canavan for their tireless efforts on this venture.

Administration:
A parish as big and as vibrant as Holy Redeemer requires careful day-to-day management and administration. We envisioned an administrative team working in close harmony with the parish clergy, assisting them by relieving them of administrative tasks and freeing more of their time for pastoral duties. We envisioned a more up to date computer network. What was achieved went way beyond this, thanks to the efforts of our admin subteam:

A review of the workload in the Parish Office was undertaken, resulting in Janice coming on board to work with Felicity. This was to enable as much paperwork as possible to be taken away from the clergy. Additionally, the parish telephony system was upgraded and a new computer system, network and broadband link was installed, enabling better use of the internet and email facilities.

A parish canvass was undertaken, which included a visitation to all homes in the parish with a view to renewing the Planned Giving Family Offering, which had last been carried out in 2002. Leaflets were delivered outlining the current major expenditure items (including the Youth Centre, Church heating system and renovations to the Little Flower Hall). This resulted in immediate donations of around €10,000 and an annual increase in planned giving of over €20,000. This work also included an update of the names and addresses of parishioners in the parish data base.

In 2006 a review was undertaken of security around the presbytery, with the assistance of the Gardai. The result was the introduction of procedures regarding the counting, handling and transportation of cash to and from the presbytery.

Also in 2006, the administration team produced and circulated a comprehensive Health and Safety Statement for Holy Redeemer church campus, in accordance with the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005. This effort also uncovered a comprehensive list of work to be carried out to bring us up to date. This work has been completed.

An ongoing project of the admin team is to look at the whole setup and management of the Parish Centre. So far, recommendations have been made regarding the heating system there. Further work will look at the overall management of the facility.

Outreach:
Outreach is something we struggled with for a while as a team. We felt it really pervaded all other areas and was a fundamental part of what we are as a welcoming parish. However, in the past few years, outreach has grown as a focus area in its own right. To give you a flavour of what Anne and Veronica have been doing and coordinating as part of our outreach focus:
1. New format of Bray Churches Together - we represent H.R. at monthly meetings
2. 6 week Positive Parenting Course run during October November 08 in conjunction with Barnardos
3. Questionnaire developed and delivered to 6th Class pupils leaving primary school in 2008
· to elicit their feelings about Holy Redeemer as a parish
· to invite them to put forward ideas for new youth centre
· to enlist any students interested in helping out with Youth Centre website etc.
4. Preparatory work for parish visitation
5. Co-ordination of meeting of Fr. Enda with parish groups. There was a lot of work involved in this - contacting all of the groups, collating their information etc.

Communication:
In my experience in business life, no matter how much or how often you communicate, people always say that you could or should have done more! We envisioned a communications plan for Holy Redeemer which would strengthen the awareness of all that happens in our parish and that would explore and implement new ways of communicating, especially using the web.

This area proved to be so big that Mary set about putting a whole new team in place to deal with it. Initially, a lot of focus was put on updating and developing our previous website, ensuring that information was current and relevant. I particularly liked the fact that Johno's homilies were made available. The team also focused on encouraging the various groups within the parish. One early initiative was a facilitated recruitment campaign, to raise awareness of our parish groups and activities and to encourage new volunteers to come forward to join our groups. This, by the way, is a core function of a pastoral council. Let me give you a little more detail of what the group has been working on over past 2 years or so:

Three main projects have been undertaken since 2007:

1. Linking in with our new international community in Bray. This involved:
- organising a special Mass involving and recognising our new International Community in Bray and Holy Redeemer
- setting up monthly Masses with an international theme - 10.30 a.m. 2nd Sunday of the month
- circulating leaflets to try and engage with the International Community and to actively invite them to be truly part of our parish, to be involved and to enquire of their needs.

2. Re-launching the website

3. Drafting a Parish Handbook and subsequently a Parish Groups' Leaflet

Drafting of parish handbook for distribution to all homes during the planned house-to-house visits October 2008 (while this house-to-house visitation did not take place, the handbook has been typeset but obviously would need to be updated if it is to be printed eventually). In December 2009, a leaflet was produced outlining details of all of the Parish Groups. We plan to use this leaflet in early 2010 to promote the Parish Groups; attract new members to the Groups and ask parishioners to identify other Parish Groups that might be formed.

December 2008
Liaised and organised with RTE, the introduction to the live broadcast of Christmas Eve Mass 2008.

October 2009
Organised meeting of Parish Groups to meet our new clergy. Following this meeting, proposal drawn up to continue to engage with Groups and for more interaction between Groups in 2010.

Many ongoing projects e.g.
· open/discussion debate on themes that are sometimes considered controversial
· more interaction with our International Community
· improved communications within the church building including use of screens, PCs available to access parish website etc.
· further development and promotion of the website

Pastoral Spiritual:
In this area, we envisioned that there would be greater co-ordination between the 4 Bray parishes, fewer Sunday Masses in Holy Redeemer and an increase in alternative liturgies led by lay people.

We have already seen a reduction in the number of weekend Masses in Holy Redeemer which has delivered a number of spiritual and practical benefits. No longer are priests and other participant groups under time pressure, especially on those special occasions where a few extra minutes can mean a big difference in the quality of our liturgical celebrations. There is also far less pressure now on the practicalities of getting cars in and out of the carpark between Masses on Sundays!

We have certainly seen greater co-ordination between the 4 Bray parishes. In fact, what we did not fully foresee 5 years ago was the idea of ‘clustering' between our parishes. This is an initiative which has evolved in Bray and which is fully supported by the diocese, whereby neighbouring parishes come together to discuss and take joint action on areas of mutual interest, and share resources for the benefit of all parishes. Representatives of the PPCs of the 4 Bray parishes have been very active in the last several years in terms of meeting together on a regular basis, and collaborating on Lenten and Advent programmes and other initiatives. In particular, the 4 parishes have recently been looking at the question of Mass times across Bray and developing proposals which will offer Bray people a great choice of in terms of Mass times. These proposals are still being worked on.

We have also seen the delivery of the Mater Dei 3-year course in Theology which was supported by all 4 parishes in the town. It is delivered each Tuesday night and is currently in its second year.

Further work remains to be done in this area, in particular to look at evolving and developing our liturgies in Holy Redeemer and getting more people involved in this area of parish life.

Challenges:
Any 5 year plan is an ambitious undertaking and in that kind of time period challenges are bound to emerge. We knew at the outset that we were facing into one particularly major challenge - the retirement and replacement of John O'Connell, having spent more than 34 years as our PP. The challenges turned out to exceed our expectations. As a parish we have emerged from a very difficult year. . We have a new team on board now, committed to our parish and we are moving forward. It is particularly important that we do so, as Holy Redeemer is a very important parish, not just to us who live here in this community, but also within the context of the diocese. Parish clustering will take on increasing importance in the coming years and it is important that we have 4 strong parishes in Bray working together for the greater good of our joint communities. During 2009, Archbishop Martin personally told me of the respect he has for what has been built up in Holy Redeemer and that he wants to see that continue. During his visit last September for Fr. Enda's installation, he publicly thanked and referred to the work of the PPC and indeed all who have contributed to the success of Holy Redeemer parish.

PPC Role:
We have almost come full circle in terms of reviewing our 5 year plan. The final element is that of the role of the PPC itself. In our plan, we set out the role of the PPC as being to facilitate and encourage all the work of the parish, with particular emphasis an enabling leadership and participation across our faith community, by actively promoting our parish vision and ethos. That is largely the role of any PPC.

Which brings me nicely to the current juncture. As I mentioned at the outset, we are undertaking a major recruitment drive to replenish the PPC membership and to replace those of us who are retiring having completed our terms of office. The recruitment process has been well publicised. Nominations are still coming in, which is great. In due course we look forward to welcoming the new members to the PPC. They will be joining Enda, Colin and Joseph, and also Anne, Veronica and Domhnall who are still in the middle of their terms. I take this opportunity to wish the new team well in their endeavours. I'm sure it will be a very strong team indeed.

I have to say I have been very lucky to have already worked with a very strong PPC team over the last 6 years. I pay tribute to Mary, our vice-chair, to Denise, Eamonn, Liz and Felicity - for everything you have given to our parish, whether as part of the PPC or in the many and varied other capacities within which you serve our community. I know that your involvement will continue in various ways. As, indeed, will mine. I have served in many capacities in the parish since the early 1980s. I have been particularly privileged to have been part of parish leadership teams since 1994. Although I made my mind up not to go forward for the PMG when it was set up, I somehow found myself on the team! Goes to show how much will-power I have! I was honoured to have been chosen by the team to be their chairperson, and to have been invited by the team to stay on through John O'Connell's retirement.

I'd like to end with some words of thanks. Firstly, to the outgoing PPC team - Mary, Eamonn, Denise, Liz and Felicity. I thank them for their tireless work on behalf of our parish. They have helped enormously to establish the PPC in Holy Redeemer and to ensure it is a stable structure which will serve our community well into the future. By extension, I also thank those who have been members of the PPC during the past 6 years who have already moved on to other things - John Ryan, Anne Daly, Nicola O'Dwyer, John Whelan, Shay Hiney, Brian Flynn, Mary Ashall, Leonie Canavan, Mary Mangen and Elaine Daly. If you count them up, including the current lay members of the team, that's 19 people who have served to date on our PPC. Not a bad record of turn-over and replenishment so far.

I wish every success to the incoming team, who will be joining with Anne, Veronica and Domhnall as the lay representatives on the PPC. Special thanks to Enda, Colin and Joseph for the opportunity to have worked with them as they began their ministries here in Holy Redeemer. I assure you of my ongoing support in whatever way I can.

Finally, a personal word of thanks from me to you, the parishioners of Holy Redeemer who have been very supportive and encouraging towards me in my role on the PPC over the last 6 years. I hope in some small way to have helped the process of change within the parish that has established the new role of laity in taking even greater ownership and responsibility for the future of our faith community.

Click here to download the PDF excerpt of the 2005 Newsletter.

Click here to download a PDF version of the PPC Report.