Harvesters in Christ
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For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. —Jeremiah 29:11The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
—Proverbs 16:9The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.
—Proverbs 16:1-3And he gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ. -Eph 4:11-13
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In these times...
In these times of drastic change for our local faith community as well as the world-wide Church please know we have not abandoned the ideals set forward in our pastoral plan, Harvesters in Christ. Evangelization is the mission of the Church and we will continue to live up to the ideals in our pastoral plan.
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Documents and Links
- Harvesters in Christ II- Pastoral Plan for 2018-2021
- Final Report for first Harvesters in Christ plan: 2015-18
- Harvesters in Christ -PDF of PowerPoint Presentation from our Town Halls
- Harvesters in Christ - our first pastoral planning document for the Cranberry Catholic Collaborative
- Rationale for revising and continuing Harvesters in Christ
- Disciples in Mission- Pastoral Planning for the Archdiocese of Boston
- First Year Report under Harvesters in Christ
- 2018 Annual Collaborative/Parish Financial Report
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Pastoral Planning
The mission of the Archdiocese is to share the Good News of Jesus Christ. Pastoral Planning is the process we use to make preparations to carry out that work. Pastoral Planning is a critical tool in helping us understand our task today and work together to manage the resources available to meet the needs of the people of God. Needed at all times, it is particularly important as we cope with demographic and other major changes. Cardinal Seán O’Malley has called us to develop a “culture of planning” in the Archdiocese, so that we can become more effective evangelizers of God’s Good News. The Archdiocese of Boston continues to evolve. We are a Church on the move, faithful and resilient. We look forward to God’s gracious future. Please join us in the effort of pastoral planning.- from the Disciples in Mission website. ( Read the Disciples in Mission Plan in its entirety here.)Cranberry Catholic Pastoral Planning Journey
The Cranberry Catholic Collaborative is a Phase 1 Collaborative under the Archdiocesan pastoral plan Disciples in Mission. The plan seeks to form the parishes of the Archdiocese into clusters of parishes. Each cluster would become a collaborative under a single pastor. The pastor would form a "pastoral service team" (collaborative staff) to provide the best pastoral care to parishioners of the collaborative communities as well as evangelizing: making disciples of all nations!
- In the Fall of 2013, the CCC Staff, Parish Council members and some volunteers began the first of many hours of training in leadership, evangelization and how to write a pastoral plan. You have heard our many announcements re “closing the offices for training and development” and have been wondering what on earth we have been doing! Under the overall Archdiocesan Plan (Disciples in Mission) we have formed a tri-community collaborative comprised of the Catholic churches in Lakeville, Middleboro and Rochester: the Cranberry Catholic Collaborative. “DIM” was created for the purposes of strengthening our parishes’ infrastructures and dynamics so that we may carry out Christ’s Mission.
- In May 2015, the members of the writing team submitted their final draft to the pastor, Fr. John Sheridan who forwarded it to Cardinal Sean O'Malley. At the end of June 2015 the plan was approved!
- July 2015... CCC Leadership Team, Staff and Parishioners read the plan, pray the plan and live the plan!
- Summer of 2018- As our original plan came to a close, a new plan- a sequel- was written. Several new goals were written and other goals taken out. The new plan for 2018-2021, called Harvesters in Christ II was approved by the Cardinal in september of 2018.
Training for the collaboratives has followed along on three tracts: Leadership, Evangelization, and Pastoral Planning:
- Leadership: The collaborative Leadership Team has completed approximately 50 hours of training and 20-30 hours of meetings and homework. Topics have included working with differing personalities, structuring meetings, time management, drafting a team charter. The Leadership Team works on goals that need to be met, before the plan is put into use, that are necessary for the collaborative to function. The Leadership Team completed the Team Charter and is already working on their goals.
- Evangelization: By December of 2014 members of the Leadership Team, other staff members and some volunteers will have had approximately 35 hours of training. Topics included our sacramental life, vocations, faith formation, forming intentional disciples, reaching out to those in need, how to write and give witness testimonies and being a welcoming and evangelizing people.
- Pastoral Planning: Leadership Staff and some members of the PPC and a couple of other volunteers have come together to form a writing team. This team is responsible for writing the pastoral plan for our collaborative. This Team has had about 18 hours of training in pastoral planning plus countless meetings and a lot of individual homework! The writing team has had their first meetings to begin the work of drafting a plan to take our collaborative from July 2015 through to June 2018. The Cranberry Collaborative submitted a rough draft to Cardinal Sean in December of 2014. After approval the rough draft will be filled out with more details and submitted to the Cardinal by June2015. We then start living out our plan!
You might ask why we are doing all of this? Weren’t we doing okay before? The answer is that we can always form good parishes but it takes a lot of structure and planning to form truly great parishes! We want to become the best and most effective disciples of Christ that we can be! We ask you to please keep our Leadership Team and Writing Team in your prayers as we hold you in our prayers.Our Pastoral Plan Title and Logo
Our pastoral plan title is called Harvesters in Christ to represent not only our community's agricultural nature but also to reflect that each one of us is a sower of the seeds of Christ's love and we harvest new disciples for service in our Lord's mission. Our logo is a variation of our collaborative logo with the addition of wheat stalks to the cross and cranberries. The wheat stalks are of course a symbol or the Eucharist.
YouTube Disciples in Mission PlaylistTo view videos separately click here: YouTube Disciples in Mission Videos. or view all videos below: