…to be working in a parish?

After two and a half weeks, my answer hasn’t changed since the first day. It’s exciting, it’s challenging yet it’s strangely relaxing and reassuring. Above it all, it’s brought me closer to God, both literally and figuratively. Ultimately, I think it’s great that by writing about my current work, it might inspire other parishes in Singapore to adopt a similar style of empowering the laity, according to their needs. Blogging about work… how quaint!

Now the Catholic Church has, for the past four decades, been advocating an increase in lay movement in the Church. That is to say, to allow the regular Catholic to play a bigger role and lighten the burden of many a parish priest. The Church of St. Mary of the Angels achieves just that by hiring more than a handful of permanent staff to oversee the daily going-ons in the parish. This isn’t to say that the priest is made redundant, on the contrary, he’s now freed to be even more flexible when handling the affairs of the parish.

I’m working in the Youth and Young Adults Office, an exciting place to be as all sorts of programmes and events are being planned and prepared by the full-time youth worker. I help him out by creating a database for all the youth of the parish, as well as helping him prepare sessions for his youth leaders.

As a youth leader myself, this ‘immersion’ of sorts comes at a most opportune time. A chance for me to absorb as much as I can, learn both the advantages and disadvantages of certain decisions, and hopefully be able to implement certain changes in the parish of Holy Family.

It’s going to be an exciting month.