The Neighbours Without Borders Program has much to offer our faith communities seeking to reengage with the call to mission. Seen through the lens of cultural engagement, the course has valuable insight for anyone desiring to live missionary discipleship in today’s world. The very practice of ‘coming as guest’ and being open to the presence of God within any new space we might find ourselves is the foundation of journeying together and living synodality. The sessions were engaging – a mix of lived experience, applied knowledge and a healthy dose of humour and fun.

BRENDON MANNYX
MANAGER – COMMUNITY & MISSION, DIOCESE OF MAITLAND – NEWCASTLE

Experiencing the PALMS NWB Training has been a unique thing for me, after more than 60 years of Community Development work. The way PALMS thoroughly researches the content, “works the program,” maintains contemporaneity, and facilitates the experiences is thoroughly professional, but also uniquely warm and relational, while being spirit filled. This is a precious achievement in today’s all-too-facile, superficial and “efficient & effective,” over-rationalised world. Which is not to say that PALMS is not professionally organised and efficient – it definitely is, but that’s as it should be, an invisible part of the operations, not the overwhelming compliance-type superstructure dominating everything.

DR ROBBIE LLOYD
JUSTICE & PEACE OFFICE, CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE OF SYDNEY

If you’d asked me before the training I’d have said I consider myself pretty broadminded and interested in other cultures. Attending NWB I discovered just how deep colonisation runs and identified and confronted a few deep-seated assumptions about how I look out at the world.

Dr MICHAEL WALKER
SOCIAL JUSTICE FACILITATOR, CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE OF SYDNEY