A parish in New Zealand had embraced Go Make Disciples, Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP’s vision for the future of Sydney parishes. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
Launched in December 2020, Go Make Disciples was the fruit of some five years of conversation, research and discernment.
Since then, it has been the catalyst for evangelisation initiatives, formation opportunities, men’s and women’s networks, conferences and resources engaged by parishes, chaplaincies and other Eucharistic communities of Sydney.
In just three years, its influence has spread to other Australian dioceses and now a parish in New Zealand’s North Island.
In 2017, when Fr Simon Story accepted a call to return to the New Plymouth parish he first served eight years earlier, the changes he saw shocked him.
Once a booming parish made up of four independent parishes, Fr Story was shocked to find his attendance numbers halved.
“My parish was ‘asleep’,” he said.
The fruits of the six-year journey Fr Story and his parish have taken since his return culminated in the November 27 launch of a new vision for the parish, inspired by GMD.
The five pillars within the GMD document—evangelisation, leadership, community, formation and worship –struck Fr Story as suitable for his new vision.
“It stimulated our thinking. It was so comprehensive; we could spark off each other when reading the document and came up with so many different ideas,” he said.
“We were then able to think about a future for ourselves, create a vision of what we could see happening in New Plymouth.”
FULL STORY
Archbishop’s ‘Go Make Disciples’ goes global (By Darren Ally, The Catholic Weekly)
