A New Job Description for Pastoral Council!
This past January, I wrote in this article about the importance of having a leadership team at a big parish like St. Raphael that consists of staff members who in turn work closely with the parishioners on the pastoral council to help a pastor make good decisions, communicate, and implement. I spoke about how regular contact between the pastoral council and the leadership team will help us to better collaborate across the many aspects of our large and complex parish, better plan for the future – and take the next steps toward the new evangelization in the joy of the Gospel!
To better serve in these ways, the pastoral council (PC) had implemented some significant changes this year in the way it works:
- The main focus of the PC is now on developing broad strategy for the whole parish, especially the formation of ongoing, long-range plans.
- To better do this type of work, the PC no longer meets for an hour once a month but for a whole morning or afternoon once every two months or so, together with the leadership team.
Given this new focus of the PC, the kind of people we need as council member has also become more clear and focused. As pastor, I need people on the PC who have the gifts, interest, and availability to do big-picture parish strategy work! Below is a job description.
