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The Diocese of the Midwest, the Archdiocese of Western Pennsylvania and the Bulgarian Diocese announced today that the Parish Development Forum will be held online Friday July 16. Registration will begin in mid-June.
“While many regions are lifting COVID mandates it seems most effective to once again offer the Parish Development Forum as a one day online session,” said Joseph Kormos, Forum co-chairperson and Parish Development Ministry Leader for the Archdiocese of Pittsburgh.
The theme of the 2021 Forum will be “Awakening to Opportunity”. “While ‘getting back to normal’ sounds attractive, we are hopefully not returning to parish life as it used to be but rather building to something better,” said Archpriest Stephen Frase co-chairperson of the Forum. Parishioners return as different people to a parish that is different in many ways. Roles, jobs and ministries may have changed. Fears and concerns exist. Yet, we are offered unprecedented opportunities to reach out as more resilient, more forward looking and less insular parish communities.”
“The agenda will incorporate a blend of keynote and parallel breakout sessions in which attendees can choose from an array of skill building and dialogue sessions,” said Kormos. Topics will be organized into three important content tracks – ‘Personal Spiritual Resiliency’, ‘The Resilient Parish’ and ‘Becoming Fishers of Men’. Each track will have three individual, synchronized topic sessions. Attendees can pursue a single track or move between tracks throughout the day. In providing three tracks parishes will hopefully encourage participation by multiple parish leaders to participate and report back on the content in the different tracks.”
Archpriest Frase added, “For the past seven years this conference has attracted persons from virtually every OCA Diocese and many other Orthodox jurisdictions. The online venue makes this opportunity available to a broad group of potential attendees.”
Registration will be online only and will open in late-June. Sessions will begin at 10:00 AM Eastern time Friday July 16 and conclude at 5:30 PM that day. The registration fee will be a free will donation that can be made via PayPal and credit card at the time of registration. For more information contact Joseph Kormos at joekormos1@gmail.com.
