Canadian Martyrs Church

Building on What You Told Us (October 3, 2009)

A Background Note for the October 3 Town Hall on the Pastoral Plan

Dear Parishioners,

The core message the pastoral planning team received from you in the parish survey earlier this year was that Canadian Martyrs is a great community that is welcoming, engaged and family-oriented, but one that needs to grow if we are to thrive in the face of the many challenges facing churches today.

The challenges you mentioned fell into three categories, which could be taken as the priority areas for the future development of our parish.   These are: living our faith, building our community, and running our parish.  Doing these well will drive the financial resources to sustain our needs.

We hope that you, the parishioners, will continue to help us dig deeper into what these priority areas mean in terms of more specific objectives and actions to be taken.  There are, of course, other important aspects of our life at Canadian Martyrs that merit attention, and we hope that you will share with us your thoughts on these, as well.

1. Living Our Faith

We live our faith in many ways: in private prayer, in community worship and liturgy, in reaching out to those who are in need of our love and help, in deepening our understanding of our faith, in sharing our faith with others - both in our families and in the broader community, etc.

Our faith is a living one filled with joy and hope. Living our faith is why we come together as a community. Do we do enough to support each other in our faith at Canadian Martyrs? Could our liturgies be more inspiring and joyous? Could we make our faith more alive and appealing to our children or to those who might be interested in joining us? Could we be doing more to understand what Christ is telling us in the Gospels or the Church in its teachings? Could we be doing more for the needy, the neglected, the helpless and the homeless, where Christ awaits us? Are we aware enough of the problems the Catholic Church is struggling with?

We can start with what we have: the weekend Masses, the children’s liturgy, RCIA, Development and Peace, prayer groups, food collection, etc., and ask whether we are doing them well enough. Is something missing? Do we have the right resources? What should come first?

2. Building Our Community

Building our community of worship is another way of living our faith.  Family is at the heart of this at Canadian Martyrs - the children who gather around the altar at Sunday Mass and their parents,  as well as the larger family of worshippers who meet and greet each other at Mass and at our social functions. Building community means building our family identity.

Families are (or should be) occasions for joy: do we do enough at Canadian Martyrs to celebrate our bonds of friendship and faith? Should we do more playing together as well as praying together? Should we be more pro-active in reaching out to newcomers and in inviting others to join our faith family? Are we doing enough to connect at a personal level, like making new friends at the potluck dinners,  joining ministries, chatting with strangers over coffee after church services, etc.?

Families take many shapes these days and they all require lots of effort. Could Canadian Martyrs be doing more for families dealing with the challenges of leading Christian lives  - like raising and retaining our children in the faith, enriching our marriages, supporting each other in times of stress, coming together to look into the questions we share about our faith and our families, etc.?

In addition to our ‘internal’ community at Canadian Martyrs, there is also the ‘external’ community of the neighbourhood, city and world we live in. What are our responsibilities as a parish to these outside communities  --  and what are our limits? Do we have a special role to play with Immaculata High School or St. Paul’s University? Are we connected enough to other Christian churches around us?

3. Running our Parish and Finances

Even a small parish is a complex machine to run: people to meet with and attend to, liturgical services and social events to prepare and organize, ministries and activities to support, budgets to manage, upkeep and maintenance, correspondence and reports, etc. The parish would be overwhelmed without the unstinting efforts of Fr. Robert, Jane and Kaye, and the contributions of volunteers.

The more the parish grows, the more participation it requires from its parishioners.  The more parishioners are aware of what the parish needs and why, the more they usually turn out to help. Have we been good enough in keeping parishioners informed? How can we use more effective means of communication? Are we communicating the right messages? Are there people or groups we are not getting through to, and if so, why not?

Are there better ways of organizing and running ourselves as a parish? Do we need better coordination and communication among ministries and between ministries and Pastoral Council? Do we need a better process for planning and budgeting for the future? How can we better tap the knowledge and expertise that exists in our community?

The spirit will take us a long way, but we also need to feel comfortable about the financial viability of our parish.  Will enriching our life of faith and our family-oriented identity attract new parishioners who will share their talents and resources with us? Will better communications make people more aware of and responsive to the financial needs of the parish? Will our generosity as a parish towards others move our own community to be more generous towards Canadian Martyrs? Or do we just give ourselves to the Holy Spirit and trust in God to provide?

The Pastoral Planning Team

September 18, 2009

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