The Parish Pastoral Assembly was held on the Sunday, 13 th October at 10.30am. The assembly was held in the Dewan Holy Family where all three priests, Fathers Andrew, Philip and Vincent were in attendance.
The PPA started with a welcome address from the emcee, who then invited Andrew Lim, the chairman of the Parish Pastoral Council to say the opening speech and go on to address the 2018 Parish Pastoral Assembly. Andrew Lim in this opening speech pointed the changes introduced in the Parish Pastoral 2017 such as grouping ministries into clusters, the parish’s vision and mission and also the emphasis for the year to come is on family life values. Then everyone was welcomed to post their question through a site called Slido.com. The question with the highest likes of 32 likes was “can we have a serious improvement on the landscape of the church such as more plants or trees. Activities can be organised to help make our Church more green”. The question was then addressed towards the end of the assembly.
Fr. Andrew said as a community of 7000 parishioners, we should be aware on how to grow as a community. Fr. Andrew also went on to say that as we proceed to discuss on how we can grow as one community of God, we should look at the difficulties we are having and be as inclusive as possible. In the cluster discussions, many recurring and critical issues require a deeper look and recommendations were also raised. These included budgets, members commitment and support, and so on.
Andrew Lim then introduced two initiatives in moving forward. Firstly, “Mission RRR” (Reduce, Recycle and Reuse), Mission RRR encourages us to work together as a community to help save mother earth and contribute to the church finances. As such the community can contribute their newspapers, boxes, plastics and so on. The proceeds from selling these recycling items can then be used to fund the church’s future expenses, provided fund for clusters budget instead of asking donation.
Secondly, “Mission Possible”, to reach out to parishioners in contributing towards the parish’s finances. The idea behind it is that should every working adult is to contribute RM10 every week, the parish will have sufficient funds in catering to the needs of the parishoners. These two
initiatives were developed in line with the vision of the parish - “Our Church, Everybody’s Home, A Beacon of Hope”, in the hope that the parish’s vision and mission will be internalized.
