A Message From Our Wardens Eddie and Brian

Dear Friends,

At last week's meeting of the Parochial Church Council (PCC) we spent some time reviewing the Parish Profile that it has been necessary to produce in order that we can start the process of advertising for a new priest at St John's.

Whilst a lot of work had to go into it from a number of people it made us reflect on how fortunate we are to have a thriving and growing worshipping community. It is a blessing to be able to accommodate such a variety of worship styles and to be able to meet the needs of such a wide range of people of all ages and types in one place. One of the things people say to us is that St John's has a lovely family feel. At the heart of families is love and tolerance; we think it is this that helps us to maintain such a wide appeal to many people and we are thankful for it.

The Parish Profile also includes a description and a few photographs of the church building, we sometimes take for granted that we worship in a church that is iconic in our area and is a beautiful grade 2 listed building. It is hard work and expensive to maintain but with the continued generosity of people we will continue God's work in our area and continue to make our church a focal point for our community.

There are copies of the parish profile at the back of church for you to read and we will publish a copy of it online in due course. 

Among the things we discussed during the recent meeting was our responsibility as a church for people sleeping rough, as you know we support the Cold Nights charity but we also discussed whether there may be rough sleepers in our own parish and what our Christian response to them should be. We will keep you updated with any news on practical work we agree to undertake on your behalf. We should also say thank you to the people who quietly and regularly bring food and warm clothing for us to pass on to rough sleepers through Cold Nights.  

Please spare a thought for those who won't have a home to go to this Christmas.

The church fair was a great success and thanks are due to many people for making it so. If you didn't get chance to come and would like to make a donation please see either of us or include it with your regular giving.

A great many of us also enjoyed the Seniors' Christmas meal which is provided each year for the older people in our church, again we owe a great many thanks for the work of all those that volunteered to make it a lovely afternoon.

We should soon be able to make it possible for people to donate on-line, this should help the many people that do not yet feel ready to commit to a standing order but equally don't always carry cash but want to contribute to our work.

Again, it is worth reminding everyone that we share this message to let you know what the PCC is discussing on your behalf. If you have particular views on something that you would like us to take into account in our discussions please let either or us, Brian or Eddie, know, or mention it to any member of the PCC.

Our special services for Christmas start this Sunday with our Carol Service at 4pm, followed by our lovely Christingle and Nativity at 6pm on Christmas Eve, then Midnight Mass starting at 11.30pm Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day at 9.30am.

Please join us in worship during this Christmas period as we remember and celebrate the birth of our Lord.

May we take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy Christmas.

Eddie and Brian.  

October Message From Our Wardens Eddie and Brian

Dear Friends, 

We want to make sure that as far as possible we keep you up to date with what is happening at church, particularly during the period that we have no priest of our own. As you probably know, each month the Parochial Church Council (PCC) meets to discuss how we continue to make St John's a living vibrant presence in our community and how we move forward to achieve the vision that is set out in our Mission Action Plan. 

To make sure you know what is going on we will share a message like this as widely as possible after each PCC meeting. We'll make sure that the message is read in church for those of you who don't use the internet. 

The minutes of each PCC are available in full in a folder kept at the back of church, so here we'll just pick out a few of the main points that were discussed. 

It sometimes seems that we never stop talking about money, but in order for us to carry on doing all of the things that you value: regular worship, pastoral care, Sunday school and uniformed organisations to name a few, we do need to be able to pay our way. We also realise that people are not ungenerous but are often just forgetful or don't carry cash these days. With that in mind we are going to encourage more people to donate regularly by standing order but also make arrangements for online giving to make supporting or work financially more easy. 

During the meeting we discussed areas of our Mission Action Plan - the plan that we developed last year containing our vision of what we plan to do as a church for the next few years. You can read the initial plan and results of last year's survey on our website by clicking here, or if you would like to know more about the plan have a chat with Steve Croft our Mission Action Plan champion. 

Equally if you would like to know more about anything in the PCC minutes ask anyone on the PCC - we will be putting photographs up soon on the website and in church to help you recognise PCC members. 

In the coming weeks we are making the first steps in our journey towards finding a new priest for St John's. The first stage is to develop a written parish profile that describes the area, our community and our church. The profile aims to tell a prospective candidate for the role who we are and what we aspire to in this community. As we develop the profile we will be asking as many people as possible for their views as well as drawing on the information we gathered in last year's parish survey. 

Until we find our new priest we hope you will welcome the visiting priests we have for communion services and also support our newly licensed ALMs Chris, Denise and Sam who will be leading Thursday's word services, and reader Phil who will lead our Sunday word services. 

If you need to contact anyone at church to ask about any of the things that happen here, or to ask about weddings, baptisms or funerals please contact the parish office on 0161 626 3630 or by email at stjohnhey@gmail.com 

We are fortunate to have a parish administrator to run the parish office during our interregnum to deal with what has become an extremely sizeable bureaucracy and day-to-day running of our church. 

 Feel free to speak to either of us if there is anything in this message that you would like to discuss or if you have thoughts, ideas or would like to volunteer to help with anything at church. 
Yours in fellowship, 

Eddie and Brian