Friday, April 18, 2014

The Vicar's Easter Two Penn'orth, 2014



For my Easter Two Penn’orth I am publishing

an edited version of my annual report,

originally delivered to St Hildeburgh's

Annual Parochial Church Meeting on Palm Sunday

T
his is my second APCM and, without doubt, it has been another busy year, full of new begin­nings. My first duty is to thank everyone who has done so much to help the many and varied things going on in the parish and especially to the wardens, the Standing Committee, PCC and the GAP groups, Communications and Social, for all you have done. The year has seen a very successful flower festival and Christmas tree festival, and new developments in our services.
In everything we do, and especially when we begin new initiatives, we must be sure that our motivation is right and that prayer comes first – before action. Building God’s Kingdom should be at the heart of everything we do. I believe that, when we do that, the work is truly blessed and grows. It can never be our kingdom and what we want, but rather always we should have our eyes fixed on the will of the Father.
One example of that is our Soup & Sandwich lunches for the local nursing homes for which a grant has been successfully obtained to assist us in providing this new pastoral initiative.
Pastoral work has indeed increased and I am delighted to see members of our congregation becoming part of a new ministry team. We are able to offer support, visiting, and bereavement care as we work together to support the parish and the local community. I know this work is appreciated greatly by all who receive their care.
As a result of the monthly lunch we have decided to have regular service for the family and friends of those who attend. I see this as a hugely important support to those who care for elderly relatives.
Each month, also, we now visit all our local nursing homes providing spiritual care and fellowship, we have a service which includes hymns and Holy Communion.
A
t this point I would like to pay tribute to Barbara Rice who has faithfully taken Communion to many people at home over many years and is retiring from that role this year.
In addition to these services we are in process of setting up a fortnightly group for sporting activities with people with dementia and their carers. This is on the cutting edge of the church reaching out to people with Alzheimer’s.
Just as the pastoral care of the parish and community is important so is our growing together in fellowship. We continue to have monthly lunches which are very popular with all who attend, so my thanks go to all involved. The various groups that do so much to help yet also build up the fellowship of the parish, Pat Bennington’s monthly Fellowship, Peter Surridge’s church grounds work­ing party, the Ladies’ Guild who arrange the flowers and clean the brass, and the good work of Stephen Claus and the choir. Fellowship builds us up to do the work that has been given to us – mission and evangelism and much more.
It is also very important that we provide opportunities for people to learn about their faith and to this end we ran a discipleship course last year with St John’s and will repeat it later this year. Ruth is leading a bible study at Red Rocks Nursing home and we continue to hold a Lent course each year.
My hope is that we will build in further study, as we go along but it is really great news that four people are on the diocesan foundations for ministry course.
This year attendances are up at least 28.5% and we must continue to work hard to support new people in the parish. Some of our growth is among younger families and I hope the Family Praise service has been import­ant as a way-in to church for them.
W
e can never become complacent. The Church changes and styles of worship change, too, so we must be prepared to change appropriately. The installation of the audio-visual screen has been one of those changes and I think we can be very proud of how well it has been used for Family Praise and for Holy Trinity School which is a big part of our mission.
The new head, like Peter Ham before her, is very supportive and sympathetic to all we do and is as keen as I am to involve the children so watch this space, as they say! It’s also been good to see the Mums and Tots group coming into church and joining in.
Our baptism team has been working hard, too; in the past 12 months we have seen over 30 baptisms.
Our Vision awayday was very successful and we are looking at all the feedback from the forms we sent out and the away day. You will hear much more about this later in the year.
As we have heard, our finances are going in the right direction however we can’t afford to take our foot off the pedal. Our planed giving is also been very successful and if you have not signed up I would urge you do so. Planned giving enables us to plan our mission and ministry for the year. One of the things we really want to provide this year is new chairs and soon I will be asking you soon to consider if you can help. So far we have managed to provide them in the Lady Chapel – and don’t they look great? – and they are more comfortable.
Finally, thank you all for all you have achieved this year. Without you it would not be possible

Your friend,
Rev’d Paul

Easter Sunday : 20 April 2014

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