The first Proclaim conference was held in 2012; these conferences are an initiative of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) and organized by the ACBC's National Centre for Evangelisation (NCE) and hosted by a local diocese. The mandate for the Proclaim conferences has been to help Catholics deepen their understanding of the New Evangelisation and to offer tools to help parishes build strong faith communities full of disciples. This year the conference was hosted by the Archdiocese of Brisbane.
Approximately 600 people were in attendance at the Conference with 23 participants from Melbourne. This national conference was offered as a vehicle to engage parishes and faith communities in a conversation focusing on five key areas: Leadership, Culture Change, Young People, Belonging and Evangelisation.
The theme of this year’s Conference is “Make your home in me” (Jn 15:4). There were four keynote addresses (Cardinal John Dew: Leadership in a time of change; Ron Huntley: Culture Change; Karolina Gunsser: Integrating Young People; and Lana Turvey-Collins: Plenary Council 2020). Each keynote was supported by an Expert Discussion Panel which broadly picked up the themes of the keynotes and participants were allocated to facilitated conversation groups. There were four threads for the conversations: Young people, Leadership, Evangelisation and Belonging. Each of the conversations commenced with around 15 minutes of input and was followed by a dialogue in small groups of around 6-8.
A key thread running through each of the presentations was the conviction that our approaches to how we invite people into the story of Jesus and the life of the Catholic tradition needs to change. We have the opportunity to develop missionary hearts that are outward focused and that are animated by our encounter with Jesus.
The conference also provided a context for the Plenary Council process: an opportunity for us to develop a habit of dialogue as we participate in the Plenary Council 2020 process.
At the conclusion of the 2018 conference, it was announced that the Archdiocese of Melbourne would host the next Proclaim in 2020. We look forward the opportunities that hosting the next conference will offer for the parishes in the Archdiocese of Melbourne.