News
NETworks Issue 1, 2023
In this issue: Welcome New Staff Members · Journey to Ministry · Twenty Years Later
A NEW THING
Mark Lysaght
Executive Director Australia & New Zealand
A new year. A new perspective. A fresh start. God is always doing something new and that is no different with NET Ministries. In our 35th anniversary of ministry, something new has certainly emerged. It has been an extraordinary start. Five teams have been commissioned and are currently ministering to the young people in their local areas. Teams are returning to Darwin in the Northern Territory and Hamilton in New Zealand for their fourth consecutive year, and the newness of this adventure is always there with new team members. We have also been invited into three new missions. The challenge of these new missions is energising. The strong linkage that we have always had with New Zealand has seen NET invited to new mission fields in the Dioceses of Auckland and Christchurch. This now means we have two teams in the North Island (Auckland & Hamilton) and one team in the South Island (Christchurch). The welcome to the teams has been wonderful and ministry with the young people is in full swing.
We have also embarked on a new endeavour with the launch of a NET team in collaboration with Emmanuel City Mission (Brisbane). After many years of discussion about potential partnership, a pilot team has arrived and are already serving generously. Emmanuel City Mission (ECM), situated in the heart of Brisbane city is a daytime sanctuary for the homeless and vulnerable, bringing hope and healing to those who need it most. The team will support ECM's community engagement platform which sees up to 3000 young people from 25 Catholic, independent and state schools and universities each year. They will be working in the schools coordinating the usual Encounter Days as well as some niche programs around ECM’s 'loving your neighbour' mission. The team will be preparing the students, serving alongside them at ECM, and debriefing with them afterwards. In everything they do, they’re always pointing towards Jesus, the source of strength and vision for this work. In their first week of ministry at ECM, the team had a special surprise in the form of a visit from Archbishop Mark Coleridge and Archbishop Charles Balvo (Apostolic Nuncio to Australia). I hope and pray that you are as excited as we are about 2023 and the new things that we experience God doing in NET Ministries. On behalf of countless past and present missionaries, staff and the Board of Directors, let me thank you for your prayer as well as your in kind and financial support these past 35 years. Our gratefulness is hard to put into words. We will hold a Gala on the 21st of October (more to come) to celebrate and give thanks for you and all that God has done these past 35 years.
WELCOME NEW STAFF MEMBERS
Elise O’Calaghan
My name is Elise, and I’m 22 years old and from the beautiful Tweed Coast in Northern New South Wales. Something you should know about me is that I love the ocean. I was blessed to be placed on the 2020 Caloundra MX Mission Team, where my love of the ocean could continue while learning to thrive in mission as I introduced young people to Jesus. After my rewarding year in Caloundra, I recognised how much God had given me and hence felt a call to give more. So, in 2021, I was placed on the Darwin MX Mission Team, where there my love for the water came with, you could say, some risks and challenges. However, I was given the grace to run the race and was overwhelmed by the unique experiences I was offered while ministering in the Top End. Last year, I moved back home, started my degree in Psychology, and worked as a College Youth Minister at a local Catholic High School, even though my heart knew deep down that my time with NET wasn’t up. God knows my love for the ocean and prompted me once again to walk out upon the water to Jesus, which I knew was a call to join NET staff and move to Brisbane, an ironically ocean-less place. However, 2023 has already proved to be one of great abundance and trust as I journey alongside those on the frontline and help develop them into the great leaders the Church in Australia and Christ needs them to be!
Caleb Bryant
My name is Caleb, I am 20 years old, Aussie born and raised in New Zealand. I have a love for the outdoors, especially the oceans and mountains. rock climbing and hiking are some of my favourite things to do. Growing up in Christchurch was so good for exploring, and I always looked forward to getting out into the country with my mates for a weekend. The last two years I have spent serving on team with NET ministries. I spent a year in Caloundra on my first year, and a year in Hamilton, New Zealand on my second year.
I originally joined NET because of the young people serving on team that year. I felt inspired by their joy, and the purpose they felt that had called them to mission. I felt a calling from God to do the same thing with my life, to live out the mission of sharing my faith, because of the purpose It gives me, and the joy that I experience from it. I am excited to continue my mission with NET as a staff member. I am looking forward to the year ahead, to journeying alongside our teams, experiencing growth in my own life, and seeing the work that God does through our staff and teams.
NET TRAINING 2023
NET training is always a highlight of the NET year. As the NET volunteers come together from across the country and around the world, there is a sense of expectation as the teams drive down the dirt road leading to the Glendalough Outdoor Education Centre.
The first and ongoing phase of NET training is a time of retreat where each team member has the opportunity to deepen their own faith journey. In the context of a faith community, the volunteers have opportunities to reflect on their own faith, be encouraged by their peers and to be led in their journey by the NET staff and the priests who join us for training.
The retreat experience lays a foundation for further training in personal relationship skills, team dynamics as well as skills in sharing faith with the thousands of young people they will encounter during the year.
At the end of each year, we always receive feedback about one aspect or the other of NET training which has been helpful in the growth of our volunteers. God is truly at work!
COMMISSIONING
MASS
The Commissioning Mass for NET Ministries each year is more than a celebration of the conclusion of NET Training. This is a time where the Church, through the local Bishop, expresses its confidence in these young adults to go out and share their faith with their peers. It’s not just a ‘pat of the back’ but a time of prayer, invoking the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfil the mission entrusted to us by Jesus himself. As St. John Paul II said, we must launch into the deep of prayer as we launch into the deep of mission.
While Archbishop Mark Coleridge was showing the Apostolic Nuncio (Archbishop Balvo) around the length and breadth of the Archdiocese, Auxiliary Bishop Tim Norton SVD presided at the Mass and commissioned this year’s NET teams to go in the name of the Church to missions in both Australia and New Zealand.
Samuel Masiga
For most of my life, I grew up as a street child in the town of Masaka in Uganda. Throughout my life, I always saw my mother make the sign of the cross and pray. Every day, she would teach me something new about God. She taught me how to recite the rosary and this gave me the desire to know about Jesus, but no one would talk to me about Jesus. Sometimes i would go to church and get sent away by the ushers because I was just a kid from the streets.
However, there was one occasion when I went to the church and I could not imagine how it would change the direction of my life. It was when I encountered a group of young, loving and joyful people who found me standing outside church after Mass. It was the Uganda NET Team. They invited me for one of their youth group programs and in this one session I opened my heart to Jesus and deep inside me, i felt this assurance from Jesus that He was with me and that my life would change. Life continued to be difficult but as a result of some generous benefactors, I was able to finish high school and then a degree in Computer Science. Over this time, I continued contact with the NET team and the youth group.
After graduating from university, I felt called to serve young people in the way that I had been served by the NET team and in 2022 I gave a year to serving with NET Ministries in Uganda on the Eastern Mission Team. During the midyear supervisor visit, my supervisor talked to me about doing a second year of NET. I was open to it because my heart is passionate about ministering to young people. But the next thing he said was “what if you go to serve with NET in Australia? Is it okay?” I said okay but with so much JOY. On 2nd January 2023, I left Uganda and reached Australia on 3rd January, 2023 and got picked up by Mark Lysaght and Shayne Bennett and was soon participating in Music training. It was awesome and full of learning and growth musically. After the music training, we went straight to the Initial training at Glendalough Outdoor Education Centre. This has been the best training of my life. I have got to meet new people from different nations, make new friends, and i have seen myself grow when it comes to forming relationships with people. I also gained new ministry skills from the training and it was all so good.
Six weeks seemed like 2 weeks. The days ran so fast.
Sammie is serving on the Darwin NET Team.
JOURNEY TO MINISTRY
Madyson Wistrand
My journey to NET Ministries began two years ago. I was in year 11 at the time and longing for a purpose in my life. The Darwin NET team introduced me to a youth group where I learned what it was like to have a community of people with whom I could feel comfortable and happy around and who would build me up. This experience brought me to find a joy and hope that I had never experienced before. Through this I started to turn my life around and was led to developing my faith where I found the purpose I had been so longing for. I felt so moved and loved through this that I felt the Lord wanting me to in a sense ‘pay it forward’ and be that person for other people. I had encountered the NET team leading youth groups and helping out in the community and I decided to follow along the same path where I would help at the youth groups or sing in masses. I came to a point where I was certain that NET was something that I wanted to do. Initial training has caused such a positive change for my life and has laid a foundation to be a better witness to my faith through experiencing such an authentic community and love.
TWENTY YEARS LATER
During this year’s training, we had 5 of our NET Alumni priests join us. It just happened to be the 20th anniversary of Fr Ben Johnson and Fr Michael Gallacher (Archdiocese of Melbourne) of serving a year with NET Ministries. Fr Ben gives us an insight into his experience…
Fr Ben Johnson
As I drove into NET training 2023, I thought to myself ‘not too much has changed!’ Of course many things have changed. After exactly 20 years since I did my own training there (2003) so many more young people have given themselves to this great ministry, of which in Christ we share a special connection. 20 years on, I am now a Capuchin Franciscan friar ministering in Sydney as a lecturer in theology.
Many years have passed since my days on National team 2 but what lasts is God’s peace that grew in my heart from having responded to him within the challenges of team life and personal growth. In the days directly after my visit to NET training this year, I celebrated 10 years of priestly ordination. The coinciding of these anniversaries offered me a profound sense of gratitude to God for his love and mercy in my life. Following Christ, both on NET and in religious life, has taken me to many places in Australia and the world, but most importantly I have been taken out of myself and up into the One who is Love.
I can say with great confidence that I would not be the brother of Saint Francis of Assisi, that I am today, without the ‘YES’ I made to the Lord to serve on NET ministries Australia. In every aspect of the desire in my heart to give all to Christ, I have been constantly heartened and supported by the ‘YES’ of the other Netters. This brother-sisterhood that we have in Christ has been so well nourished over the years by the staff who walk so closely in faith with the teams and all of us alumni. NET showed me that faith is simply our loving trust in Jesus Christ, witnessed by a sincere love for all our brothers and sisters.
Fr Michael Gallacher
PLEASE KEEP PRAYING FOR US!
The declaration of St Therese of Lisieux as a Doctor of the Church is a demonstration of the profound link between contemplation of the face of Christ and the mission of the Church. The driving force of Christian mission is the love of Christ, a love which is nurtured in prayer.
This year, the NET teams travelled a well worn path to the Carmelite Sisters at Ormiston. This is a tradition established nearly thirty years ago when the leaders of NET Ministries recognised that the mission needed to be undergirded by a power house of prayer. NET counts on the prayers of the Carmelite Sisters and the countless number of families, friends and supporters who continue to pray for our teams and for the mission ahead. Please keep praying for us!
Can you help us rebuild the church by transforming the lives of young people across Australia and New Zealand?
As always, please pray for us as we seek to fulfill our mission. We hope to see young hearts transformed as they encounter Jesus. That's why we exist. Thank you for your generosity.