Team Letter, June 2022

by | Jun 21, 2022 | Team Letter

Dear Friends

I hope this finds you well and able to enjoy something of the summer, which it seems has finally arrived (albeit with big dips in temperatures at times!).

Today, representatives of St.Mary’s and St.James’ are travelling to Swanwick for the ‘Leading Your Church Into Growth’ conference (click here for further information). The conference kick starts a 2 year programme of supported learning for parishes in order that they may be enabled to help their churches to grow. As I am sure you are aware, as a diocese we are committed to seeing ‘a bigger church make a bigger difference’, namely more people coming to know Jesus and more justice in the world. This ties in with the Diocesan Fit for Mission programme, a 6 year programme that is being rolled out across the diocese which has four aims, namely, introducing people to Jesus, deepening discipleship, developing Christian leaders, and working for justice. I’ll share more about Fit for Mission in another letter and how this might impact upon us here in West Warrington but if you are interested to know more at this stage, please click here.

This coming weekend, Rebecca Lloyd, who is an ordinand at St.James’ Church is due to be being ordained by Bishop Bev in the Cathedral (Sunday 26 June at 10.30a.m.). Please pray for Rebecca, her husband Dan, and their two children, Theo and Jonathan, as they anticipate this very significant moment in Rebecca’s life and their life as a family. Please pray especially for Theo who is currently unwell in hospital, having had his chest drained of fluid last week and possibly awaiting further surgery.

Finally, if you can help with the Churches Together stall at the Penketh Carnival on Saturday 9 July, please sign up on the sheet available in your churches or contact me revjeremytear@gmail.com. We are looking for people who can give an hour of their time, be involved with nail painting or other craft activities, and give out information about local churches and special Jubilee edition bibles to those attending. Set up will need to take place around 9am on the morning, the stall will need staffing between 12 noon-4pm, and then taking down after 4 pm.

With my prayers and best wishes.

Jeremy Tear, Pioneer Team Rector

P.S. Unfortunately, the Christian Aid event planned at the Cathedral for tomorrow night (21 June) has had to be postponed due to the speaker, William Bell, being unable to attend due to the rail strike. A new date will be set for the autumn.

Parish Magazine Letter, June / July 2022

by | May 19, 2022 | Magazine Letter

Dear Friends

As I write we are about to come to Ascension Day (May 26) in the Church calendar, the day when Jesus returned to be with His Father in heaven. My training Vicar used to describe this in terms of a game of football (no surprise, he was a big Manchester United fan!). The first half comprised Jesus’ coming into the world as baby at Bethlehem, his earthly life, ministry, death, and resurrection. The Ascension is the half time point in the match, and the second half is the period we are now in waiting for Jesus to return again. The Ascension is also significant in that it symbolises a ten-day period of waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have used to invite Christians all over the world to pray for five people who do not yet know Jesus to come to know him through the ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ initiative. Hopefully, you may be reading this before Pentecost (5 June) in which case I would like to extend a warm welcome to you to attend either our 8 am or 10 am services that day as we remember not only the Spirit’s arrival but also give thanks for the Queen’s 70-year reign as our monarch. Special refreshments will be available after both services – do stay and join us!

All being well, we will have our new lighter weight chairs in church by then, which I hope you will not only find comfortable but also helpful in terms of being able to be moved around. With the recent reintroduction of our community lunch on the second Tuesday of the month (12 noon-1.30 p.m.), the new chairs (and three new tables – many thanks to the Co-op for both) will I hope be especially useful for those setting and clearing up. We will have a particular Platinum Jubilee focus for our lunch on Tuesday 14 June, so do come and join us. Homemade soup, bread and butter, a cake and tea or coffee for a suggested donation of £3.50 has to be the best deal available in town!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who responded to our Stewardship initiative in Lent. This meant we met our funding target of an extra £108 income per week, indeed exceeded it if you add in over £2,000 of one-off donations. We also received over 60 offers to help or requests for further information about different aspects of our church life. On both counts it was a great response. We have also received in principle support from the Diocesan Advisory Committee for our new extension and no objections to my knowledge from various heritage bodies. So, hopefully we may get the go ahead from the Chancellor for an extension soon and then from the local authority.

With my prayers and best wishes.

Jeremy Tear

Pioneer Team Rector

Team Letter, May 2022

by | May 19, 2022 | Team Letter

Dear Friends

It has been a while since my last letter in Lent. I do hope that if you attended our Team services in Holy Week that you found these helpful, as we moved through the drama of Maundy Thursday and Jesus’ betrayal by Judas, to the agony of Good Friday and Jesus’ crucifixion, before contemplating the silence of the tomb on Easter Eve waiting for the resurrection. My thanks to Sarah, June, and Martin for helping to lead our worship and to all from our Team and other West Warrington churches who helped with the Good Friday service at Honiton Square in Penketh. And I hope that you all enjoyed celebrating Easter Day in your own churches too!

As we approach Ascension Day on Thursday 26 May, and the start of the Thy Kingdom come initiative, we have further opportunities to worship together across our team and West Warrington Churches. This year we are having another prayer walk on Ascension Day focused on the Penketh/Great Sankey areas. The schedule is:

09.00am Prayers at Penketh Methodist
10.00am Prayers at the Oaks, St. Paul’s Community Centre
11.00am Refreshments and prayers at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church
12 Noon Short service at St. Mary’s

Do come and spend some time in prayer together that day as we have this annual opportunity to pray for 5 people we know who do not yet know Jesus. And if you can’t be there in person, do pray wherever you are that day, whether at those times or some other. There will also be a short service of Holy Communion at St. Mary’s that evening at 7pm to which you are all welcome to come and to pray as well.

On a separate note, I am delighted to say that our Team Growing Leaders course began last Saturday with an introductory session at St. Mary’s. We have ten people signed up for the course, which is being run online and in person, and hopefully this will help people to grow in their understanding of what it means to lead in the church and in what area(s) God might be calling them to exercise that leadership.

Finally, I would like to draw to your attention a Christian Aid event being supported by Liverpool Cathedral and Together Liverpool (the social justice ‘arm’ of the diocese). William Bell, who is Head of Christian Aid’s Middle East programme will be speaking on ‘Israelis and Palestinians: Hope, justice and equality’ on Tuesday 21 June at 7 pm in the Cathedral Lady Chapel. To book a ticket, please follow this link- https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/israelis-and-palestinians-hope-justice-and-equality. Donations towards the humanitarian work of Christian Aid are also welcome at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/christianaidliverpoolcathedral.

With my prayers and best wishes.

Jeremy Tear, Pioneer Team Rector

Parish Magazine Letter, April / May 2022

by | Apr 3, 2022 | Magazine Letter

Dear Friends

As I write, we have just launched our Stewardship Initiative. Stewardship, as I explained in a recent sermon, is about taking care of what we have been given by God, and that includes our money, time and talents. We last held a stewardship initiative at St.Mary’s in 2018, and therefore it is appropriate that we now reconsider how we put these things at God’s disposal. There are three main things I would like us all to consider. Firstly, are we being called by God to increase what we give financially to the church? Secondly, if we have not yet joined the Parish Giving Scheme, please will we consider joining this? It really does help with our cashflow to know what income we have coming in on a regular basis, and it also saves time administering our finances. Thirdly, is God calling us to use our time and talents to serve Him in a new way? Please do think and pray about these matters. When you have done so, please return the giving and time and talents forms inside the stewardship envelope you have received from church (do let me know if you have not received one and would like one of these). Forms need to be returned in the envelope provided to our treasurer, Julie Shaw, on our Thanksgiving Sunday, which this year is Palm Sunday 10 April. Thank you for considering this, and if you would like any further information, please do speak to myself or to one of the other members of the Stewardship Team (John Taylor, Julie Shaw, Terry Finnegan, and Sue Gibbons).

I mentioned in my last letter that we have been waiting on permission from the diocese to install the new chairs we have received funding for from the Co-op. I am pleased to say that this has now been received and we hope to have the new chairs in place by the end of April. Come and try them out when you can! By the time you read this letter, we will also have applied to the diocese for permission to go ahead with our church extension. Hopefully we can obtain permission from both the diocese and the local authority by the end of the year, and start it soon afterwards.

One other encouraging piece of news is that we have been awarded the bronze eco church award by the Christian environmental charity, A Rocha. Churches up and down the UK are invited to think about how they practically care for the environment, in terms of their buildings and grounds, and to provide an environmental focus through their worship, preaching and prayer. I am pleased that we have received this initial award and hope we can go on to get the silver award during the course of the next 12 months. My thanks go to Margaret Emsley, David Scarisbrick and Clare Grimes, who together with myself, make up our church eco team. Do let me know if you would like to join us!

With my prayers and best wishes for a very happy Easter.

Jeremy Tear

Pioneer Team Rector

Team Letter, April 2022

by | Apr 3, 2022 | Team Letter

Dear Friends

It was good to welcome numbers of people from across our team, and Penketh Methodist Church, to our communion service on Ash Wednesday at St.Mary’s. Being able to join together in person for this service once again was a real blessing after not being able to do so last year. If you have joined one of the team Lent courses being run by Sarah, Martin and myself, I hope that you are finding that helpful as well.

Looking ahead to Holy Week, there are a number of Team Services taking place:

Maundy Thursday, 14 April Communion St.Paul’s 7.30pm
Vigil St.Mary’s 9.00pm
Good Friday, 15 April Churches Together Service Honiton Square 12noon
Last Hour at the Cross St.Philip’s 2.00pm
Easter Eve, 16 April Vigil St.James 7.30pm

May I encourage you to join in as many of these different services as possible and not just to attend services in your own church this year? There is a tremendous breadth of opportunities here to worship across our team, and indeed with fellow Christians at Honiton Square on Good Friday, so why not make the most of these and make your experience of Holy Week an even richer one? For those of you unfamiliar with vigils, the word comes from a Latin word meaning ‘awake’. On Maundy Thursday, we are invited to keep awake with Jesus as we remember his time in the Garden of Gethsemane in silent prayer interspersed with readings from John chapters 14-18. On Easter Eve, we are invited to keep awake with Christians throughout the world as we recall the mighty acts of God through Scripture in anticipation of his raising Jesus from the dead. And there is the lighting of an Easter fire outside as we anticipate Jesus, the light of the world, the risen one.

Finally, I want to mention our new team bible verse for this year. The core team of clergy, our ordinand, and local missional leaders sensed that we were being drawn to 1 Philippians chapter 3 verses 13b-14: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. It is not that we should, or can, forget the hurts and the pains of these past two years of Covid, but rather we felt that we don’t want to be held back by them as we seek to build back our churches as we emerge out of restrictions. I hope this verse may prove helpful to us all as we focus on what God has in store for us ahead in the coming months.

With my prayers and best wishes for very Happy Easter.

Jeremy Tear, Pioneer Team Rector