OLR Parish’s Vision for Youth Ministry

Nothing makes a parish come alive more than the vibrant contribution of youth, for their enthusiasm is so contagious. For this reason, Fr Michael de Stoop, the Parish Priest of Our Lady of the Rosary (OLR) Parish, Fairfield, has been busy planning what they can do to enthuse the youth become more active in their faith. Accordingly, Fr Michael invites you to consider two important aspects of his plan in this following message of his:

Firstly, young people like to be part of something popular. If young people come to the church and do not find a good number of youth present, they will not feel part of something special. For this reason, I am convinced that we should not be a welcoming church, for welcoming implies that we passively sit on our hands while we wait for people to come to the church before we take steps to make them feel welcome. Rather, I believe we need to be an invitational church. So, OLR Parish has invited the Couples for Christ (CFC) community to run camps throughout each year for the youth in our Parish Hall, Youth Room, and our 5 classrooms above the Parish Hall. We will then be in an excellent position to invite young people to attend a variety of these camps, each for different age groups, for the CFC run camps that are very well attended, as they are appealing and provide outstanding faith-formation.

A second factor pertaining to the importance of invitation is Mary Mackillop Catholic College (MMCC), for they are keen to build on the connection they have with OLR Parish. So, I have interviewed some students from MMCC to become Youth Ministry Coordinators (YMCs) for 10 hours per week each. As these students have just completed the HSC, they will be able to make valuable connections between OLR Parish and PBCF, as their faces are familiar to their fellow students.

What saddens me, however, is that OLR Parish has some obstacles that threaten this vision for our youth. Specifically, OLR Parish still has to fulfil our commitments to repay its loan for having extended our church. Therefore, to achieve these new initiatives for the vision of our youth, we need to develop a long-term financial plan for OLR Parish. So, I invite you to consider making donations through recurring direct debit or debit/credit card transactions by contacting the OLR Parish Secretary: (02) 9724 5997, or admin@olrparish.org.au<mailto:admin@olrparish.org.au>  The advantage of this method is that it is the best way of being able to forecast whether or not we will have enough funds to make the vision for our youth possible.

Regards,

Father Michael de Stoop

Parish Priest

Our Lady of the Rosary Church | 18 Vine Street, Fairfield
Parish Office: 2 Weston Street, Fairfield  NSW  2165 | t 9724 5997 | f 9754 1439 | e pp@olrfairfield.org.au<mailto:pp@olrfairfield.org.au>