Dear Friends

As I write this, we have just finished celebrating the Christmas season and begun another new year, indeed another decade. Perhaps like me you have spent some time reflecting over the events of the past ten years and wondering where all the time has gone! Certainly much has changed within my life – as I imagine has probably been true for you- and indeed much has changed within the life of our nation and our world.

As we approach this new decade, I wonder what hopes and expectations you might have for i? I, for one, wonder whether we can rise to the challenges of climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a leading body of climate change scientists – says we have ten years to reduce our impact on the planet and to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5C beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, flood, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. Can we individually, nationally and globally take the action we need to prevent this? I hope for our sakes, and for the sakes of future generations, that we can. I wonder whether we can also take steps to reduce the growing inequality across our nation and our world, that all might be able to enjoy more of the ‘fulness of life’ that Jesus promised (John 10: 10). And I wonder too if we can better learn how to live in harmony with each other as human beings, so that we spend less time, energy and money on conflicts and wars? Not an easy list of things to hope for (!) but then change always takes time. As Martin Luther King Junior once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”. So we can have hope then, and the Christian faith is built on the hope that through Jesus’ death and resurrection, transformation is possible.

And what hopes and expectations might we have for St.Mary’s? Our vision statement says that we want to be ‘a growing church making a growing difference’. How might that happen? At the end of last year, following consultation with church members, the PCC decided that it wanted to press ahead with proposals to create a car park at the rear of the church (using matting over the grass) and also to demolish the family room and the existing link corridor to it, and replace it with a new extension offering more meeting space suitable for both church and community useage. The latter proposal would be subject to identifying an appropriate business plan for it. This will not be a quick process and will need the creation of a PCC Building Project Team and consultation with both the diocese, local authority, local residents and community groups, as well as fundraising and applying for grants. But if these proposals come to fruition, as I hope and pray they will, then they will be one way in which hopefully our vision statement will be helped to become a reality.

Finally, I would like to end by noting with sadness the recent deaths of Rev. Michael Buckley, the former Vicar and first Team Rector of West Warrington, and also of two congregation members, Dorothy Mercer and Eddie Beckett. All, in their own different ways, contributed much to the life of St.Mary’s for which we can be truly thankful. Our prayers remain with their families. May they rest in peace and one day rise in glory.

Yours in His service

Jeremy Tear – Pioneer Team Rector