Our Church, our Parish, our Future

Fr Dominic
Parish Priest

The Feast of Pentecost is considered as the birth of the Church. No hierarchy, no buildings, just people imbued with the Holy Spirit who could not contain their joy and their enthusiasm. They wanted everybody to share in their new found Faith. They literally went out into the streets and proclaimed their beliefs and urged everybody to join them. The response was nearly overwhelming.

Today this is the same Church, the same Faith and the same beliefs. We are more organised, we have a command structure and we have buildings, we have systems, but we are the Church Jesus Christ founded. As a Parish Priest I have the overall responsibility for ensuring that the Parish thrives, grows in numbers and in Faith. The only way I can do this is to encourage more involvement in all aspects of Parish life, to ask for a more generous financial response from parishioners and to ensure that I have programmes in place to help us all know more about our Faith and Beliefs. I need to move our Parish from maintenance to Mission. To a Church whose members are drawing others into the family of the Parish by their Faith witness in their daily lives.

Many aspects of our Parish life are beginning to show gaps. The church cleaners have dwindled and it is now down to only a few faithful people. We have not had Children’s Liturgy of the Word in SS John Fisher and Thomas More, for over a year. Our offertory collections have gone down by 9% over the past three years which is a drop of £9,400 per year. We are now reliant on the rent from 28 Rossington Avenue and the income from the Romanian Orthodox to keep going. This is not a good position to be in as these rentals can change. I pray that this drive for volunteers and planned income will be a success and we can thrive as a growing and more vibrant Parish.