I love my new job! It’s so cool that my boss would sit down with me to chat and listen to the ways I think I can help him with his plans for the church. At the end of the chat, I ended up with a completely new and different portfolio than the one I was given with the job offer yesterday. An even more fun one!
Our parish of St. Mary of the Angels had launched a Roadmap at our Parish Assembly. Basically, between now and August 2010, when St. Mary celebrates her 40th Anniversary on her Feast Day, our Parish Priest wants the whole church community to go on a spiritual journey to prepare ourselves. He had taken 2 key documents from the Second Vatican Council – the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) which will form the basis of our reflection and formation as a parish.
In the following 19 months, there is a theme for reflection in each month such as Different Ways of Looking at the Church, The People of God, Marriage and the Family, Recognition of Human Dignity, and Diverse Expressions of One Common Vocation and Mission. But what the parish needs now is a work plan to implement a way for the different communities in the Church to use this Roadmap in their spiritual formation and reflection.
Enter… me. My title now is Pastoral Assistant. My main task in this role is to work with each of the various members of the parish core team to find a way to carry out the Roadplan in a comprehensive way at the various levels – e.g. to the children in Catechism, to the Youths and Young Adults, and through the Adult Faith Formation Office. The various ways would be through the parish newspaper and a monthly faith formation newsletter, through spiritual formation sessions with Youth Ministry leaders etc. This task would involve planning activities, curriculum ideas, writing articles to explain these themes at different levels and to the different communities.
Furthermore, today I went for my first parish meeting. And we’re setting up a task force to help people during this financial crisis. And we’ve decided to organize a series of talks based on the topic of Finding God in Times of Financial Uncertainty, and to help find where there are job opportunities and maybe even organize job fairs to help parishioners who have lost their jobs.
I found out there are several leadership development programmes among the youths, and that there are opportunities for me to write theological and spiritual articles for publication. What I love most about the role I now have is that I will be working with each of the key personnel in the parish to help them brainstorm how they can implement the Roadmap in their various offices.
This is everything I love to do. I love to work in a team. I love to brainstorm ideas. I love to help people do their jobs better. I love variety in my job (and this is the ultimate variety cos I have to work with different departments and do all kinds of things!). Furthermore, I get home-cooked meals. For lunch I had rice with curry chicken, sweet and sour pork, mixed vege and salted vegetable duck soup. I’m staying for a talk tonight, and I get to have dinner also! Think we’re having fried seafood hor fun.
Ah 7p.m. it’s dinner time! ta ta….till next time!
Journey of the Heart 