Mission Report

by Director of Mission, Mr Geoff Brodie

It is a common path of the modern business to invest time and energy into producing a mission statement, a values statement, a set of goals, key performance indicators, and to set out the accepted processes of evaluation. This is all good, for time spent stepping back from the everyday to consider what we hold as worthwhile and motivating, what should be achieved and how it should be achieved, is a distinct gift of being human.

What of the Catholic school? As a school we have structures, roles, responsibilities, processes, and measurable goals. That part may be open to evaluation by measurement. But what about the Catholic part? If to be Catholic is to love God and our neighbour (Matt 22:35-40) with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength and with all our mind (Lk 10:27), is that open to measurement? What calculus claims authority to define the potency and power of love? Can love be put into a key performance indicator?

May I suggest the answer has already been given to us in the Gospel and in the New Testament. Love requires the total gift of oneself to God and neighbour, and when God is involved, the gifts are infinite. There is no equation for that. Instead, our mission, values and goal are to love without limit, and that is what our sacred scripture is calling us into. To be Catholic is to accept that God loves us, and that we are infinite mysteries to ourselves, because only God knows us as we truly are. To accept God’s love is the first step in living our mysterious true self in our everyday. I suggest to be Catholic is to be immersed fully in the Gospel, for there we find the words of our mission, our values, our KPI’s.

I offer as exhibit A for your prayerful consideration, the second reading from this week’s Mass, as an insight into our vision, mission, value statement.

You are God’s chosen race, his saints; he loves you, and you should be clothed in sincere compassion, in kindness and humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with one another; forgive each other as soon as a quarrel begins. The Lord has forgiven you; now you must do the same. Over all these clothes, to keep them together and complete them, put on love. And may the peace of Christ reign in your hearts, because it is for this that you were called together as parts of one body. Always be thankful.

Let the message of Christ, in all its richness, find a home with you. Teach each other, and advise each other, in all wisdom. With gratitude in your hearts sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs to God; and never say or do anything except in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Col 3:12-17)