PARISH DELEGATE ASSEMBLY TASK FORCE FACILITATORS TRAINING

Ice breaking session and group discussion

Sandakan: In response to the Pastoral Letter from His Lordship Bishop Julius Dusin Gitom in calling for the setting up of Parish Delegate Assembly (PDA) Task Force in every parishes in the Diocese,  Jacob Chin the Task Force Chairman of St Mary's Cathedral Parish, initiated a facilitators' training program for group and community leaders on Sunday 24th September 2011 from 7.30am – 3.30pm at the Diocesan Conference Room.

It is the intention of the Bishop that the faithful at large be actively involved in contributing their opinions and views in  the process of formulating the diocesan vision and mission statement. The task force main objective is to reach out far and wide to the parishioners by way of organizing mini assemblies through the many communities, ministries, groupings and BECs.  The feedback collected from them then will be evaluated and shall form the basis / core business for the parish assembly.  

The registration

The training was attended by 51 leaders and representative from the PPC, various ministries, groupings and language based communities from St. Mary's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, St. Paul Ulu Dusun and Our Lady of Fatima Beluran.

The Eucharistic celebration

The event of the day started with a Eucharistic celebration in the chapel presided by Bishop Julius Dusin Gitom. In his homily, the prelate called on the participants to lay the foundation in organizing mini assemblies at all levels to hear from the  parishioners their understanding of their 'dream church'. The tools in reaching out will be provided in the training and the avenues are available through the many established BECs. He went on to say that the vision and mission will be more effective if proudly owned by the people and thus the necessity to involve the vast majority of the faithful. 

The facilitators and input sessions

In his briefing, Jacob explained that the facilitators' training program for the task force members are for them to organize the mini assemblies in getting the feed back and the documentation of the laity views and opinions through the many channels in formulating the Vision and Mission statement to be presented in the main parish delegates' assembly.

Group reporting

The training was conducted by Pilis Malim (PPC) and Terrence Ngui (Diocesan Soccom), whereby both of them have attended the Diocesan Facilitator Training Program conducted by Bro. John D’Cruz of, the Lasallian Formation Director, based in La Salle Centre, Ipoh, Perak. The training emphasized more on group discussion workshop so as to effectively gather information from the target groups. In order to maintain uniformity in reporting, Pilis has prepared the facilitator’s guide for the task force facilitators to follow.  The participants undergone a 5-topic sessions training covering;

1. Ice Breaking
2. Understanding of Church
3. Reality of current scenario of the local church
4. Ideal or Future Image of the local Church
5. Way forward to achieve the desired goal

More group reporting

The flow of the training sessions was  very lively with everyone actively taking part . The training also saw some budding leaders coming up especially from the youth during their group presentations and hopefully such training will be a catalyst in discovering more and more potential leaders of the parish in the future. 

Fr Phillip in his closing remark

 In the closing ceremony, Fr. Phillip reminded the participants to draw strength and wisdom from the Lord as they embark on the task of conducting mini assemblies. 

Presentation of certificates

As a sign of recognition of their contribution towards the Parish, all the assigned task force facilitators and main organizing team were presented with certificates followed by a closing prayer led by Fr. Phillip.

DaliusLL