A new video from the Sydney Centre for Evangelisation captures the night five south-west Sydney parishes decided to stop going it alone and launched a young adults network of their own. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
Stronger Together: A New Young Adults Leaders Network in the South-Western Suburbs is the sixth in the SCE Parish Renewal Team’s video series exploring what happens when parishes come together. It shows a launch with no glossy campaign and no strategy document handed down from above – just a barbecue, a church full of young adults, and parish leaders with a shared vision.
The video follows the August 3 gathering at St Mary Queen of Heaven, Georges Hall, which brought together young Catholics from five parishes in the South West Deanery: St Mary Queen of Heaven, Georges Hall; St Therese, Padstow, St Patrick’s, Revesby Heights; St Christopher’s, Panania; and St Luke the Evangelist, Revesby.
The evening, named Ignite, featured a concelebrated Mass, a shared meal, and an “Ask a Priest” session driven by the young people’s own questions.
Earlier films in the series have told the story of parishes assisted by the Parish Renewal Team that have formally amalgamated or have collaborated informally and the fruits of that coming together.
This short film celebrates a different kind of coming together: five parishes that remain distinct but have chosen to pool their people, their energy, and their faith.
Fr Dariusz Basiaga, parish priest of St Luke the Evangelist, was one of the initiators of the collaboration.
“It’s not easy for a single parish to do the event,” he said. “We don’t have so many young people or young adults, but if we bring them together, we have the opportunity to support each other.”
He credits the Parish Renewal Team with turning a good idea into a night on the calendar.
“The Parish Renewal Team helped us with the preparation, especially bringing us the data, looking at this area, how many young people do we have, how many are involved in the church. We brought the priests together and then we brought the young people together.”
“The best part about this is that it’s actually being led by the leaders that are in these parishes,” Campbell Evans, Mission leader from Sydney Catholic Youth within the SCE, says in the video.
“It’s not an archdiocesan thing. It’s leaders from these parishes who have come up with it. They’ve asked for it. It’s what they want and needed.”
FULL STORY
New film features launch of young adults network in SW Sydney (By Darren Ally, The Catholic Weekly)
