Gerald Aynsley reflects on how Parish Pastoral Councils can work synodally for the life of the parish.

THERE ARE TWO things in particular that I notice when coming to a new parish. First, I enjoy observing the number of people involved in the life of the parish. Second, it is wonderful to see how much parishioners love their parish. I think this is the synodal church in action. I am aware of how the themes of communion, participation and mission are much more than ideas — they are lived realities. Noticing this and being attuned to what is going on in the parish and wider community is what I would consider the foremost task of the Parish Pastoral Council (PPC).

Synodality Is More Than Business

When a PPC meets there are numerous factors at play. We have different personalities; some can be outspoken and forceful, while others can attend a meeting and say almost nothing. Among us we have different experiences of parish life and perspectives on what the parish should look like. Our PPC meeting can tend towards a certain issue, such as maintenance, or liturgy, or compliance-related matters, while other matters languish. The notion of synodality provides us with a theology and an approach to underpin how our PPCs function and to provide clarity to the PPC’s purpose.

Listening and Discerning

Often when I am part of the celebrations of the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, I consider the implications. For example, I think to myself: "Here is the church celebrating the presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of these young people. Will we now sit at the feet of these 8-year-old children in order to discern what God is saying to us as a Church?" Figuratively, sitting at the feet of the baptised — those who gather on a Sunday and those who don’t — is what a synodal PPC will seek to do. They will ask: What is God up to in our community? How is God trying to get our attention?

A Parish Pastoral Council that listens needs also to discern. We each have our own biases. This is true of the members of the PPC, the parish priest and each person in the parish. In discernment we may find that an idea or a concern may have been set aside or not given the regard that the person with the idea believes it should. When this occurs, we need to ask, are our biases at play? For this reason, a PPC needs to gather in a spirit of prayer and reflection. It can’t just be a business meeting where we try to sort out everything going on in the parish.

Synodality Is to Invert the Hierarchical Pyramid

In his homily commemorating 50 years of the Synod of Bishops in October 2015, Pope Francis remarked: “Synodality [is] a constitutive element of the Church. In this Church, as in an inverted pyramid, the top is located beneath the base ... A synodal Church is a Church which listens, which realises that listening ‘is more than simply hearing’. It is a mutual listening in which everyone has something to learn.”

Pope Francis invites us to turn upside down the old and rather worn-out image of the church as a pyramid (those at the top have all the answers) in order to truly listen. Inverting the pyramid — or better discarding it altogether —  changes how we see one another, and particularly, changes how we go about things. Because synodality requires that we begin by listening, rather than with doing. Of course, the PPC does do something and now the synodal vision hints at how a PPC can function more fruitfully for the parish and mission.

From Top-Down Functioning

Looking back, I can think of the times when our PPC got caught up making plans and drawn into a certain activism. We have busily thought up ideas for the parish and all the things that we should do. These are the meetings I leave feeling overwhelmed.

In hindsight I realise that if we’d taken more time discerning the movement of God in people’s lives, we would have been less inclined to start imagining that things needed to be directed by us. We didn’t recognise it at the time, but we were essentially following a top-down ecclesiology, functioning as if the parish was a pyramid with us at the top deciding how things should be.

To Synodal Functioning

Other meetings have left me feeling enthused about all that is occurring in the parish and feeling a desire to engage more deeply in the mission of God that we see unfolding. Sometimes we’d spend half the meeting simply talking about all the things we saw going on in the parish and discussing what different parishioners were doing. It created a spirit of thankfulness and led us to consider how we can continue to align ourselves with these movements of God’s grace.

These occasions helped us become aware of our call to serve the parish, not to imagine ourselves as in charge of organising the parish. It is opposite to the top-down approach. These were examples of the PPC being attuned to the diversity of the parish, honouring the variety of ministries and so able to support one another as we seek to engage more faithfully as discipes of Jesus in the mission of God.

Listen, Notice, Support and Encourage

In the end, the synodal vision provides us with a better way of being a Parish Pastoral Council because it elucidates an important truth: the parish is not merely an organisation that we need to organise and manage. Our parish is made up of the people of God and it's God’s church. If as a PPC we genuinely listen to and grow attuned to how the Spirit is active in the lives of those who are baptised, we will see our role as important in supporting and encouraging the parish community as it grows in participation, in communion and in mission.

I think it is true that what we are attentive to will become what we attend to. As such, if as a PPC we are attentive to what God is doing in the lives of our fellow parishioners and community around us, then we will also put our energy into what God is doing.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 301 March 2025: 14-15