With 2009 quickly approaching, the San Pedro Regional Pastoral Council is preparing for a round of early-year deanery meetings that it hopes will jump-start its progress on implementing the Synod Initiatives.

As part of Cardinal Roger Mahony's upcoming deanery visits on the topic of the finances, this year Regional Pastoral Councils will have the opportunity to make a presentation to attendees. In the San Pedro Region, planning is underway for the 20-minute presentation, which will include a brief history of the Pastoral Council and a look to the future.

"We especially want to encourage and engage people to join one of the six initiative committees and get involved in advancing the work of the initiatives," said David Kennedy, current moderator of the Regional Pastoral Council, and member of St. Matthew Church in Long Beach. Kennedy said that it is important for people to understand the initiatives and the vision for the church they create.

"The cardinal has been very gracious to give us this opportunity, and we are very excited to be able to reach people this way," he added, noting that the meetings - the first of their kind - were quite well attended last year

The Regional Pastoral Council is wrapping up a busy year with significant work taking place this fall on Synod Initiative II (Structures for Participation and Accountability). A Pastoral Council Workshop was held on Oct. 18 at St. Joseph High School in Lakewood which drew 150 participants from area parishes. Dr. Mark Fischer, professor of Pastoral Studies at St. John's Seminary, led the workshop which was designed to assist parishes in forming their own pastoral council as envisioned by the Synod.

Some parish groups attended to learn how to move from being a "ministerial" council to a pastoral council. Kennedy said that, during the survey process done by the Regional Pastoral Council, pastors were generally very receptive to the idea of creating a parish pastoral council.

"I was expecting resistance, but instead I found enthusiasm, curiosity and a desire to learn how to do it," Kennedy said, explaining that the most difficult step for some parishes was using the discernment process in the forming of a council. Currently only nine parishes in the San Pedro Region lack some kind of pastoral council, Kennedy said.

Plans are also underway for a spring Social Justice Workshop to advance work on Initiative VI (Social Justice: Living at the Service of God's Reign). One of the goals for this workshop is to assist parishes in forming and using their own social justice committees. According to Frances Jonte, a member of the Initiative VI subcommittee, and parishioner at St. Joseph Church in Hawthorne, many parishes are not even aware that they are already doing social justice ministry.

"People can be confused about how to identify what social justice ministry is," Jonte pointed out. "Many parishes have outreach ministries in place, and yet do not clearly understand that the corporal works of mercy and Catholic social justice teachings are the same."

Jonte added that only about one third of parishes surveyed in the region actually have established social justice committees. The hope is that more parishes will see they can easily use what they have in place to seed a social justice committee.

In the coming year the San Pedro Regional Pastoral Council has plans to work on each of the six initiatives, and hopes the deanery meetings - set to begin in late January - will help provide more enthusiastic people to advance its work.