Parish Development

Parish and Deaneries

Implementing the pastoral plan

Parish Development Strategy - a local mission planning approach to make the pastoral plan work for your area.

What is the Parish Development Strategy?

The parish development strategy is not a new initiative, it is a tool to help parishes implement the Pastoral Plan. We are not just responsible for the Church today; we have a fundamental responsibility to hand a healthy and sustainable Church on to the next generation. The missionary priorities given to us by the Synod process and the Pastoral Plan outlined 6 key areas of focus, including area 4:

Becoming a Church that renews its organisational structures and administers its property to serve its mission.

The Pastoral Plan Asked...

We seek to both provide a mechanism for “brave and creative” options to emerge for the future and be a genuinely synodal approach. Starting in Lent 2025, we will be working with deaneries to implement a local mission planning approach. It will not be possible to launch this in all deaneries at once, therefore it has been decided to pilot this in the three Sefton deaneries. It is an exciting prospect, and, if it is effectively delivered, then we will be able to pass on a vibrant and mission focussed Church in liturgical, evangelistic and social action terms.

How do we take this to the next level?

Our task is to give tools to the local church so they can determine a local plan that they will own for the future. This must be firmly rooted in the Pastoral Plan and focussed on the missionary imperatives of the Church and - while they would help the church to determine what resources are necessary, including buildings, to support and deliver such a mission - they are a vision of hope. The most important thing is that the starting point is mission – the rest flows from that.

What it the process?

It is proposed that the local planning process would need to be conducted at two levels:

1. Family of Parishes (FoP) – who will assess each parish in the family and oversee the preparation of local mission plans

2. Deanery level - involving Deanery Synodal Councils, checking the compatibility of FoP plans and cross deanery issues.  

What are the phases for this? 

There are four cyclical phases:

Phase 1

Review the Current Situation. Taking into account: parish, schools, demographics, community, church partnerships. Geography, buildings and finances.

Phase 2

How does your church respond to all the information that has been gathered and assessed in phase 1?

Phase 3

The church is asked to plan realistically for the future for the delivery of the vision and priorities set in phase 2?

Phase 4

The church implements the plans to the agreed timetable

Can I find out more?

As this is a fully synodal approach, the full strategy document is available for everyone to read. You can view it at the link below.

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Questions & answers

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What are Families of Parishes and why are we creating them in the Archdiocese of Liverpool?

Over the next few years, all parishes of the Archdiocese of Liverpool will join other parishes in new groupings called “Families of Parishes.” Families of Parishes are groups of parishes, generally three to six, sharing resources to advance the mission, including having multiple priests, deacons and lay people serving the Family of Parishes. This model will allow the priests, deacons, religious and laity associated with each parish to better share their gifts and talents with the whole Family of Parishes.

Our shift to Families of Parishes is a response to the synod recommendations, which called for a renewal of structures of our parishes to make them radically mission oriented. Our goal is to make our parishes places where individuals and families can encounter Jesus anew, grow as disciples, work synodally and be equipped to accompany one another within our communities and beyond their boundaries.

We have listened to the voices of the archdiocese in the Synod recommendations to be bold and creative.

Our mission hasn’t changed, but how we approach that mission must shift in response to our circumstances. We must move forward together synodally with greater collaboration and better stewardship of our resources.