About us

Our purpose

Sion Catholic Community for Evangelism is a Spirit-led community.

 

We are called to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ and equip others for the task of evangelisation.

 

Guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we seek to be a prophetic sign of hope through our work, words and witness of life.

We are a community of disciples called to grow together and support each other in our call to make the Good News of Jesus Christ known.

With a rich 40 year history of running parish and school missions, retreats and events, and ministries to men and women, young people and families, we seek to follow where the Holy Spirit leads us.

Our community is made up of laity and clergy, some in full time ministry living a shared residential community life and many living in their own homes across the country, evangelising in their own family, parish and work environments.

As members of Sion Community we each undertake our own mission pathway to use our gifts and talents to share the gospel where God has placed us, actively looking for ways and opportunities to share the Good News. We support and encourage each other in these missions, and seek opportunities to evangelise together at larger events, missions and weekend retreats.

We gather together regularly throughout the year, both virtually and in person, for training, prayer, worship and fellowship, building a spiritual home together to nurture and nourish us on our individual journeys of discipleship and evangelisation.

We value

Community Life 

Embracing our commitment to love one another.

Encounter

Creating space for people to meet with God and one another.

Discipleship

Growing in maturity as missionary disciples, to disciple others.

Worship

Glorifying God through our fully Catholic and charismatic life.

Mission

Building the church by evangelising ‘from community into community’.

Our journey

Conceived on 8 December 1984, Sion Community has offered parish missions since 1985, and in the 1990s grew to offer secondary and primary school missions and residential events at SENT. 

In the year 2000, we birthed a sister community, Céilí, in Ireland, where our founder, Mgr Pat Lynch, now lives. Currently, we are working in a number of partnerships: TEM – a new evangelisation project in Lithuania, theASCENT – a discipleship process for Catholic young people, Sawyer’s Church – a local ecumenical outreach. 

We work under the authority of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales and have three patron bishops -Archbishop Bernard Longley, Bishop Alan Williams, and Bishop David Oakley. 

Leadership Team

Our elected leadership team reflects the Covenant membership of the Community. We are unified in our diversity, each pursuing different mission pathways and serving the community through our leadership.

Fr Gareth Leyshon

Fr Gareth Leyshon first encountered Sion Community through a Discipleship Training School in 2006, shortly before being ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Cardiff-Menevia in 2007. He joined Sion Community in 2017 and was seconded to its full-time ministry for four years from 2019. He now lives in South Wales, administering four churches north of Cardiff City.

Prior to pursuing his vocation – only having become a Catholic at the age of 17 – Gareth read physics at Oxford and obtained a PhD in astrophysics from Cardiff. He maintains a keen interest in the relationship between faith and science, and was recently commissioned to write a series of articles on “Science and Scripture” by the bishops of England & Wales.

Ever since becoming a Catholic, Gareth has been passionate about the great commission to make disciples of all nations. He rejoices to live in an age when more and more parishes are embedding this into their identity, and especially to see Sion Community refreshing places parishes and other organisations cannot reach.

Alice Hall

Alice met Sion Community through a Cross Purposes school mission in 1992 and has been involved with Sion Community ever since. She is single and in discernment for a more committed consecrated life.  She lives at the Ark, our community house in Coventry. 

Following a Discipleship Training School in her late teens, she initially joined the youth team and later moved into initiating, leading or developing various areas of ministry within Sion Community. She has a degree in Drama and Theology and a Masters in Theology and Christian Ministry. 

Alice is passionate about the love of God and about people. She finds life serving Him through preaching, teaching, praying with and walking alongside others as well as through worship. Alice looks forward with hope to what God has in store for Sion Community in the coming season and is delighted to be leading the Community as part of a team.

For more details about the community membership or volunteering with Sion Community, contact us below

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