Dear Friends

With the introduction of a second national lockdown, and the tightening of restrictions to prevent the spread of coronavirus, there has been much made in parts of the media about ‘Christmas being cancelled’. But whatever restrictions might be in place this year, let me assure of you this: Christmas is definitely not cancelled. For nothing can cancel out what God has already done for us in sending his son, Jesus Christ, to earth 2,000 years ago. It is that which we shall continue to celebrate as Christians once again this year, even though I do not think we will not be able to celebrate it as we normally would both in our church building and with family and friends. Our Christmas services will also definitely be taking place, albeit on Zoom, if not also in the building. For further details of these, please see elsewhere in the magazine, but given the fluidity of life at present, do consult our church website www.stmarysgreatsankey.org.uk, weekly notice sheet or church noticeboards for the latest information.

I wrote in the last magazine about our Annual Parochial Church Meeting. I’m very pleased to say that Lynn Parish has been reappointed as churchwarden, and we now have both Ian Knight and Kate Forrest appointed as assistant wardens, together with Roxy Jones, Sarah Lavelle, Leanne Turner and Gemma Tocher being appointed to the PCC. Please do keep them and all existing members of the PCC in your prayers as we seek to navigate our way through these challenging times.

How might we all help and be helped through these times then? Firstly, through prayer. The Archbishops invited us at the start of this second lockdown to pray every day for the nation at 6 p.m., and to consider fasting on a Thursday. Maybe that is something which it would be good for us to continue doing as we watch and wait for the coming of Christ through the season of Advent this  year? Secondly, through communication. It’s good to be in touch with each other and with others. I’m very grateful to those church members who have agreed to ring others so that we keep in touch with all in our church community during these difficult days. But of course many of us will be in touch with each other anyway, and that can help to reduce isolation, as does the Team Telephone Befriending Scheme reaching out to the wider community which some of us are involved with. Thirdly, through our giving. At Christmas, we remember the greatest gift God made to the world through sending his son, Jesus. What gift might you be able to make back to God to support the work of the church at this time?

With my best wishes for this Advent and Christmas season, and a brighter new year.

Jeremy Tear

Pioneer Team Rector

P.S. I am pleased to report that the work on the organ chamber has now finished and the next step will be to reinstall the organ back into its usual place. We are also currently waiting on a date from VirginMedia for the installation of broadband into our church building.

JEREMY’S JOTTINGS

Dear Friends

I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on various developments at St. Mary’s since I last wrote two months ago

Firstly, by the time you read this, we will have resumed our Sunday morning 10 am services in church. It is good to now be worshipping in our building three times per week once again and if you can join us on a Wednesday or Sunday it would be lovely to see you. I am very conscious that some of you do not feel comfortable returning to church at present, however, and therefore the PCC has agreed that we will continue our online zoom services at 10am on Sunday as well. To enable this to happen, we have also agreed that Kathryn Hayward will have permission (with the Bishop’s approval) to lead and preach at both online services and in church. Steve Parish has also kindly agreed to help out, particularly with celebrating communion. This will mean that some Sundays I will be in church at 10am and other Sundays I will be online. In due course, the PCC hopes that we will be able to stream our 10am service to those watching online at home by installing broadband in the building (subject to the relevant permission being granted). We will aim to do this thanks to a generous grant from the Deanery of £1,000 to enable all churches to get their worship going again. This will also prove helpful not only for worship but also for meetings, Lightnings, and be of benefit to all who have a mobile phone!

Secondly, on Sunday October 18^th at 11.15/11.30am, we shall be holding our Annual Parochial Church Meeting (APCM) in church. This has been postponed from April and is our annual opportunity to review the past calendar year as well as to hear developments for the future. If you wish to attend, please email, or ring me, to book your place (numbers will have to be limited to 30 people at present). I am hoping that we will be able to share with you the latest developments concerning our plans to build an extension onto the west end of the church and introduce a car park into the rear churchyard. There will also hopefully be sample chairs for us to sit on to try out with a view to purchase by the PCC using the money we were given by the Co-op last year. We will also be looking to recruit a new churchwarden (Lynn Parish is willing to re-stand), 8 members of the PCC and 3 Deanery Synod members. If you would like to stand, please complete an election form available at the back of church or ask me to send you one if you will not be in church to do this (the electoral roll is also open for those who wish to have their names added to it). The PCC and Deanery Synod are the means by which we seek to pursue our diocesan vision of being ‘a bigger church making a  bigger difference’ so if you are interested in doing that, do step forward or have a word with myself or Lynn Parish first.

Thirdly, we have now completed the retiling of the chancel roof (thanks mainly to a generous gift) and also nearly completed the transformation of the organ chamber into a much-needed storage space. Once the latter work is completed, we will be reinstating the organ into its traditional place underneath the organ pipes. This has taken a long time to achieve and I am very grateful to Lynn Parish for all her hard work in enabling this to happen and for your patience whilst this work has been undertaken

I hope you continue to stay safe and well, and to see you in person or online over the coming months.

Jeremy Tear

Pioneer Team Rector

Dear Friends

So much has happened since my last letter for the April/May magazine that it’s hard to know where to start!. At the time I wrote (mid-March) we were just in the process of entering into lockdown and I commented then on how Easter would be very different this year…and so it was. No public gatherings for worship for the first time in 800 years… But you can’t hold a good man down, can you, and so whether at home on TV, radio, skype, we celebrated the wonderful news of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, albeit socially distanced from one another (of course).

I was attending a webinar (for those of you unfamiliar with the term, a webinar is a seminar on the web) organised by the Church of England recently on welcoming people back to our churches. One of the contributors (a Vicar in London) spoke of seeing Jesus’ death and resurrection as offering an interesting parallel for our times. For just as Jesus’ resurrected body had a continuity with the past (the disciples could recognise him at times), it was also in some ways different (Jesus could come and go through locked doors, for example). And so, this Vicar said, that is like a metaphor for the church arising out of the current pandemic. There will be some sense of continuity with the past, but life will also be different in some ways. And I guess we may all be aware of some of the ways that is already true. For example, online services, where we have had over 40 people online at different times, or online Alpha courses (such as the one we have recently finished). It’s worship, it’s the Alpha course, but in a very different way to what we have been used to. And some of those changes may carry on as we continue to move out of lockdown. We will be continuing our Sunday morning Zoom service until at least September (do contact me if you want the link). Our next Alpha course this autumn (see elsewhere for details) will be held online. And at PCC we have talked about meeting online through at least the colder months of the year.

But the coronavirus will also influence other ways we do things as a church. So, whilst we have now resumed our services at 8am on Sundays and 10am on Wednesdays, we cannot currently share a common cup for communion or to sing together. I appreciate that may be deeply frustrating for some of us, and hopefully that is one change which will not last, but whilst it does we face choices. Will we return to worship in the church building or stay worshipping at home? Perhaps the church of the future is not only going to be a mixed economy in terms of offering traditional services and fresh expressions of church but also a mixed economy in terms of both offering physical and online services. Just as we are moving away from giving envelopes and cash on the plate to the Parish Giving Scheme (direct debits), our contactless giving machine, and website giving page (https://givealittle.co/campaigns/678f5f44-1515-41a5-a48b-794292e44c15), so further changes are I believe inevitable. Facing such changes is never an easy thing for us to deal with us as human beings (all of us find change difficult in different ways) but as we respond to such change we can do so in the knowledge that ‘Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever’ (Hebrews 13:8).

May God bless you, your families and loved ones, and watch over you in these challenging times.

Jeremy Tear

Pioneer Team Rector

Dear Friends

As I write, ‘we live in interesting times’ as JF Kennedy put it. The global pandemic concerning coronavirus has brought the world to something of a halt in many places, including our own country. We may be fearful for our own health and that of others, fearful too for jobs and livelihoods, holiday plans, and indeed simply fearful of the future, not knowing how long the virus will cause disruption  for and when life may return to some degree of normality.

In the first letter of John chapter four, verse 18, he says: ‘Perfect love casts out fear’. That is a thought I would want to encourage us to hold onto in these difficult days. Fear can sometimes exert a grip like hold upon us and prevent us from living life in the way that God intends. So may I encourage you to offer any fears you have at present to God in the knowledge that He is alongside you and with you. And whatever may, or may not, happen to remember that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8: 39).

On a different note, it was great to welcome back Professor Ian Tracey, the principal organist at Liverpool Cathedral, to St.Mary’s on 14 March. His recital on our newly refurbished organ was a profoundly moving display of great skill and expertise as he showed off the different parts of the instrument. I am grateful to Jean Lawrence who brought the evening together which helped raise over £430 for the church in the process.

This month, as I write, we are due to be marking Holy Week and Easter once again. Whilst we will not be able to meet for public worship as things stand, as that has been suspended currently, let us remember that nothing can stop the benefits of Jesus’ death and resurrection for us. Events around us may be cancelled, but what Easter signifies cannot be.  So wherever we may be celebrating this Easter, let us remember in the words of the traditional Easter greeting that ‘Christ is risen.He is risen indeed. Alleluia!’

Finally, as we are due to be holding our Annual Parochial Church Meeting on Sunday 26 April at 11.30 a.m., I would like to pay tribute to Sylvia Morris who is standing down as warden this year due to ill health. She has been a tremendous support to me, alongside our other warden Lynn Parish, and our two assistant wardens, Ian Knight and Janet Kerswell. I am also thankful to Ian and Frances Knight and Sue Gibbons who are completing their terms of office on the PCC, and to Gail Pattullo and Carole Rafter who are completing their terms on the Deanery Synod. Please do think and pray whether God might be calling you to stand for these offices this year.

Take care and keep an eye out for further information as events unfold through our website – www.stmarysgreatsankey.org.uk– and through emails sent out via ChurchSuite, our church data management programme. If you are not currently on ChurchSuite, please do contact Helen, our administrator, who will provide you with the necessary form to get you on board.

Wishing you and your family a hope-full Easter.

Jeremy Tear

Pioneer Team Rector

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

Dear Friends

It seems hard to believe that Christmas is just around the corner! I don’t know about you but each year I feel as if Christmas suddenly creeps up on me and catches me by surprise! I know it’s coming (of course) but nevertheless once November arrives it feels like everything all of a sudden takes on an increasing pace and before I know it we are into Advent and December and there is no stopping the Christmas rush!

But that’s why it is so important that we take the season of Advent seriously. For Advent is meant to be about creating the space for us to prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of Jesus at Christmas, and indeed to prepare ourselves for His Second Coming – whenever that might be. But how do we do that in the busyness of December? One of the things I have always found helpful is to go on retreat prior to the beginning of Advent. This year will have been no different and by the time you read this I will have returned from time at the Sheldon Centre in Devon (https://www.sheldon.uk.com) where I will have been on a silent retreat exploring the four last things – the traditional Advent themes of death, judgement, heaven and hell. If all that sounds a little morbid (!), then let me remind you that because of Jesus’ coming into the world and his subsequent death and resurrection, we do not need to fear those things. As the final verse of that great carol, ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ says:

‘Mild he (Jesus) lays His glory by,

Born that man no more may die;

Born to raise the sons of earth,

Born to give them second birth’

So, as you begin Advent this year, may I encourage you to carve out some space (at home or at church) to reflect on what Jesus has done for you by coming to earth, being born as a weak, vulnerable baby and eventually dying on a cross and then rising to new life. For Advent not only prepares us for Christmas but also for Easter. For unless Jesus was born, he could not live, die and rise again. So, as we prepare to celebrate once again the mind-boggling mystery of the Incarnation – God made flesh in human form -let us also think about those we can invite to share in the Christmas season with us. Bishop Paul is offering a challenge to all in the churches of our diocese to think and pray for a number of people who we can invite to our Christmas services this year. If we can all bring one person to church this Christmas, what a special gift that would be! If you would like further information about the challenge, please visit https://www.ruleoflife.org.uk/courses/our-bring-one-friend-challenge/

May I wish you and your family a thoughtful Advent, a peaceful Christmas and a hope-ful New Year

Jeremy Tear

Pioneer Team Rector