Parish Pastoral Council

Our Role.......
The Parish Pastoral Council is the coordinating and unifying structure of the parish community. It should be the means of achieving full participation of the whole parish in it mission by giving all a voice in encouraging, guiding and directing the various aspects of parish life. The council is a parish in miniature. Its members gather together the thoughts and ideas of the community, work them together until some general agreement has been reached, and then translate this consensus into parish goals. Finally, it sees that these goals are acted upon by the parish community. 

The Parish Pastoral Council is not meant to be either a dictatorship, insensitive to the needs and concerns of the people, or a strictly democratic body, deciding by a plurality of one vote the major direction of a parish. Nor is its model to be the efficient business organization. Rather, it is to be sensitive to the movement of the Spirit among God's people, to work for a unified vision or general agreement among its members and to help the whole parish to meet the challenge of being a church in the modern world.

As a group of Christian leaders, the Parish Pastoral Council should be a witness to the parish that barriers can be broken and separation healed by men and women of patience and good will. As the members become a warm, loving, caring group themselves, they are a model of what the parish might be. By their unity with one another, as well as by their decisions, they gradually influence people of the parish to make worship of God and service to people a priority in their individual lives, as well as the goals of the entire community of faith. 

Setting Parish Objectives... 

The Parish Pastoral Council's major role is to set goals annually for the parish - goals which are consistent with diocesan goals. It is also important that the Council decides on priorities among the goals so that the personnel, resources, time and money of the parish can be apportioned properly. To do this, a parish needs to develop a mission statement that embodies the values and vision of this local parish community. 

The Parish Pastoral Council and commissions should make consistent efforts to involve parishioners in the planning process. The more they are part of the planning, the more they will see the goals as their own and will be willing to collaborate in carrying them out. 

Parish goals must be set each year by the Parish Pastoral Council for the following year. It is often helpful to set goals for a longer period of time, such as three to five years. One-year goals are but one stage in fulfilling the broader vision.