How Pastoral Council was Formed: Holy Trinity Pastoral Council was formed under a structured personal discernment process in early 2018. Current council members have read Divine Renovation, completed CliftonStrengths and have participated in Alpha as attendees. This common experience has helped us to build a shared foundation and understanding of missional church.
How We Function: Holy Trinity Parish Pastoral Council is a visioning and strategic planning group. Equip the Saints: New Parishes: Stronger Together, published in January 2019 by the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth, defines parish Pastoral Council as “a planning body that brings together the diverse strengths and talents of parishioners to work with the pastor to craft and monitor the vision for the parish. This group meets regularly to discuss and review progress toward the parish’s missionary vision. Their meetings should be forward looking and focused on the pastoral and missionary activity of the parish.”
Our Work to Date: The early part of Pastoral Council’s first year was spent forming our Structural and Behavioural Norms, and developing procedures for Council composition and succession planning. These structures are vital to ensure productive and healthy functioning of Council at present and for many years to come. Our priests spent much time in prayer to receive God’s vision for our parish. After sharing this with Council, Council members were able to encapsulate what we believe to be inspired vision and mission statements for our parish (The mission is what people do in order to achieve the
vision.):
The vision and mission statements are the filters through which Council constructed and selected the goals for the parish plan. “Joyfully go” was chosen to reflect specifically the character with which Holy Trinity Parish will embrace Jesus’ commission of going and making disciples.
Data from the parish’s Spring 2017 ME25 survey, and Statistics Canada data for our parish boundaries were both consulted during our goal discernment. Council noted the representation of people attending church in our buildings did not proportionately reflect those living within the greater community of Sackville – Mount Uniacke – Beaverbank. Council realized in order to bring Jesus to new people by our mission, Holy Trinity Parish needs to intentionally target young GenXer and Millennial families and their children in our greater community. Reaching out beyond our walls will help in the renewal of our parish by transforming and reaching the hearts of others as Jesus commissions us to do.
Five Year Plan Overview of Goals: As a visioning body, the Pastoral Council was tasked with providing a 5-year plan. The Holy Trinity Leadership Team (HTLT) will now use this plan to guide them in implementing yearly goals in a tactical, detail-oriented manner. Council does not oversee this process of implementation nor contribute to the decisions regarding its execution; rather, we will continue to advance the vision. Council will re-visit the 5-year plan periodically to assess and evaluate its progress and realign goals with our mission and vision.
Critical Success Factors: To “joyfully go” and reach others, Holy Trinity must address Critical Success Factors integral to our mission. While constructing the 5-year plan, Pastoral Council spent time discerning critical elements for success:
- Unification of Communities
- Address priorities of the three communities while focusing on unifying priorities as a single parish
- Continue work that was started by transition team around structures and properties
- Ensure mass schedules allow time for socialization between masses
- Personnel needs
- Invest in parishioners as lay leaders in the parish
- Grow our Holy Trinity Leadership Team (HTLT)
- Hire staff to support the mission
- Communication Plan
a. Ensure effective communication to the parish in a timely manner
b. Communicate outreach to young families and millennials as a need to grow our church
c. Celebrate and share changed lives and witnesses - Finances
- Increase a culture of giving
- Focus funds on mission-oriented goals/developing leaders
- Allocation of financial resources to hire staff to support the mission
- Address lack of funds for deferred maintenance repairs of three buildings
- Norms and Structures
- Create and utilize structures and norms that guide the functions of ministries and events.
Five Year Plan Overview of Goals
PLEASE NOTE: Goals were revisited and modified by Parish Pastoral Council in light of the COVID-19 Pandemic (updated June, 2020).
| YEAR 1 | YEAR 2 | YEAR 3 | YEAR 4 | YEAR 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 |
| Goal (Evangelization): Invest in running Alpha as our primary evangelization tool and improve its marketing. | Goal (Discipleship): Offer 3-4 Leadership Summits/year for key leaders in the Parish. Use these events as a communication tool and opportunity to build into leadership so that they can further build leaders themselves within ministries. | Goal (Worship): Invest in Music ministry resources outside our parish including investing in sending leaders to worship conferences and opportunities in other churches. | Goal (Worship): Enhance and provide times and means for reflective prayer and silence inside and outside the liturgy. Build a culture of reverent worship. | Goal (Worship): Build a strong relationship with Saint Benedict Parish and Divine Renovation that allows for mutual appreciation and a desire to learn from each other and grow together. |
| Goal (Community): Create opportunities for community, where parishioners can receive fellowship, prayer and support outside and around mass times. | Goal (Community): Work with sacramental candidates and their families by intentionally creating opportunities for building community within IGNITE, EDGE and Confirmation Programs. | Goal: (Evangelization): Provide opportunities and funding to send key Alpha leaders to Alpha Conferences or training beyond the parish level. | Goal (Discipleship): Promote and teach on the Eucharist in all facets of parish life; our source and summit. | Goal (Community): Provide church related avenues for young families to access sports and alternate forms of community to provide a bridge to church community. |
| Goal (Community): Create one unified culture as a parish, where 3 separate cultures existed as a Pastoral Unit. Examine all facets of church life and functioning including but not limited to, ministry, buildings, temporal affairs etc. Continue the work that has been started by the Transition Team in making decisions in how to best utilize buildings and assets to carry out our mission and vision. | Goal (Ministry): Work with CliftonStrengths tool to enhance work of Engagement Team and getting those involved in Ministry. Goal (Ministry): Create a clear process and structure for connecting to, participating in, and moving through ministry life cycle. | Goal (Evangelization): Reach out to Millennials and GenXers moving into our community boundaries and determine ways we can connect with and be invitational to them. | Goal (Ministry) (Discipleship): Create a structure around sacraments that is designed as a readiness model to eliminate on- off year to year attendance. | Goal (Discipleship): Shape the path for engagement with FORMED and promote and integrate it into parish life. |
| Goal (Ministry): Further invest and promote the recently constructed Holy Trinity Parish Engagement Team. | Goal(Community): Develop and Launch Growth Groups. | Goal: (Worship): Create a structure to coordinate the work of Music Ministry. |
The Holy Trinity Parish Leadership Team and Pastoral Council acknowledge gratefully the years of service and dedication many have made to parish life. With parishioner time, talent and treasure, Holy Trinity has made an invaluable contribution to our greater community, and we thank you for your commitment. We believe we can mission together and that Holy Trinity parishioners have a vital role to play as we proceed.
Over the last 18 months (prior to November 2019), Holy Trinity Pastoral Council has had the privilege of discerning Holy Trinity Parish’s vision and mission. As the faithful we are responsible for passing on what we believe.
Moving forward we reflect on the great commission, the words given to us by Jesus himself, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit […] and remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28: 19.
The challenges ahead of us are not small.
However, Explosively alive in the Holy Spirit, and Strengthened in Community,
we can Transform the World by making disciples for Jesus.
