Article Three

Disciples in Mission – Phase One Implementation – Article Three

What will happen when?

A PDF of this article, suitable for printing, is available here.

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you have some connection to one of the Parishes that are a part of Phase One of the implementation of Disciples in Mission.  Things are happening quickly now, and you may be wondering what will happen when.  Here’s the best time line we can give you as of today.

We’ve finished the Parish Consultation Meetings.  The Clergy Personnel Board is now meeting to recommend Pastors to Cardinal Seán.  We expect that all of the new Pastors will be named by April 7, and some of them somewhat earlier.

The Pastors will do their training in the first and last weeks of May.  Also, during May, the Collaborative Support Team will begin to meet with the Pastors, to help them in any way they can through the transition.  The Pastors will move on June 4.

On July 1, the twelve Collaboratives will be formally inaugurated.  During the summer, the Pastors will begin to work on assembling the Councils, and his Pastoral Team.

In September of 2013, the Parish Pastoral Councils, Parish Finance Councils, and School Boards will have their training – like all of the trainings, this will be in the theology and practice of the New Evangelization, Catholic Leadership, and the mechanics of collaboration.  Also, in September, the Pastoral Teams will have their first round of training.

The second round of training for the Pastoral Teams will begin in October of 2013, and will continue for four months.  This training will be on site, and will be much more specific to the particularities of each Collaborative.

In January of 2014, the Pastor will appoint the team that will write the Local Pastoral Plan.  That team will begin with some training, and then will set about the process of writing a plan on how the local Collaborative will become a strong, stable, conscious and effective center of the New Evangelization.  It will contain details on the life of the Collaborative, including methods for analyzing the effectiveness of the work which the Collaborative is doing.  The team will have about a year in which to write that plan.  At the end of that time, they will present the plan to Cardinal Seán, who will either approve it, or send it back for more work.

In January of 2015, the Collaborative will begin living out of their local Pastoral Plan.

So the time from the announcement of the Collaborative to its full implementation is two years.  All along the way, especially during Phase One, the work of the Collaborative will be observed and studied, so that we can learn and improve the process.