Vicar’s September Update
To see the latest email update, listing lots of things that are going on this Autumn, click here.
Introducing our New Administrator
We’re delighted to announce that Clare Bell has joined us to work as our new Benefice Administrator.
Based in the church office in Upton Parish Church, Clare will be the beating heart behind all our administrative work across our churches (except Welland) and will be responsible for making the clergy look slick and organised. Best of luck Clare!
Clare has some great relevant experience, some family who are clergy, and a mum who runs a church office in Dorset, to fall back on for advice!
If you need to contact her, you can reach her on the parish office number (01684 591241,admin@hopechurchfamily.org) from 27 August.
Her normal office hours (until Christmas) will be: Monday 1-3pm, Tuesday, Thu, Fri, 9am-1pm.
Birmingham Community Gospel Choir to play Upton Church!
On Sunday July 20th, as part of a special Blues Festival Service, The Birmingham Community Gospel Choir will be performing at St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Upton.
Founded in 2005, the choir won the BBC Songs of Praise Gospel Choir of the Year award in 2015, have appeared on the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, Songs of Praise, The One Show and most recently in this year’s Britain’s Got Talent.
Bringing together singers of all ages and background from across the Birmingham area, and lead by experienced singer and song-writer Maxine Brooks, we can expect a fun and fabulous morning of joyous gospel music.
The event begins at 10:30am, but get there early to make sure you get a seat, and like all events at the Blues Festival, entry is completely free.
10:30am, Sunday July 20th, St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Upton.
All Change in the Church Office
We’ve made some changes to our office administration.
Wendy Thompson ceased to be our administrator at the end of August. We’re enormously grateful for the work she’s done, and wish her all the best for the future.
All five of our PCCs have now agreed that we should, subject to funding, seek to employ an administrator for up to 20 hours per week. The role will cover the things that Wendy was doing for us, plus a number of additional items. The role will be located in Upton.
Whether we are able to do all this depends on us finding additional funding, which is what we’re beginning to work towards now.
If you are interested in applying for the post, please keep an eye on the Bridge magazine, as we’ll be advertising there.
In the meantime, we’ve made a couple of decisions about how to handle some of our administrative processes.
- we’ve rearranged our telephone system to make it easier for people ringing the church office to speak to someone. All calls are now being diverted to an answering service, which will give options for wedding, funeral and baptisms, for contacting clergy, for building and financial enquiries, as well as an answerphone option. The new office number is 01684 810018. That number again… 01684 810018.
- Carol Hutchings has volunteered to become our first point of contact for weddings, baptisms and funerals, until the new administrator is in post. If you know of anyone wanting a baptism or wedding, please direct them to Carol. For funerals, the undertaker is always the best point of contact. You can contact Carol direct, or on 01684 810018 (option 1).
- We’ve revised our weddings and baptism application process, getting rid of the old paper-based system and making it possible to fill in a number of our forms online through the church website. The weddings page has also been significantly redesigned to try to answer many common wedding questions. You can find details at www.hopechurchfamily.org/life-events
- Finally, if you want to know about any events going on at our churches, the best place to look is the What’s On page on our website. It lists everything that’s going on. You can find the what’s on page here: www.hopechurchfamily.org/calendar
Barry Unwin
Vicar’s Christmas Email
Christmas Eve, 2016.
To read the vicar’s latest email update, click here.
Christianity Explored
No matter where you are on your journey with Jesus -whether you’re just setting out or whether you’ve been on the road for ages – we want to help and encourage you to grow deeper.
A great place to start is by getting to know Jesus in his own words, straight from the gospel of Mark. We call this: Christianity Explored – a course for anyone who wants to investigate Christianity informally with a group of other people.
We’ll be starting early in 2017, and depending on the number of people signing up may run more than one course at different times in the day. When booking onto the course, please let us know whether daytime or evening is best for you.
To find our more visit our Courses page.
Remembrance Sunday 2016
Remembrance Sunday – 13 November
We have three opportunities across our churches to give thanks to God for those who have given so much for our freedom.
On the east side of the river, there’s a Remembrance Sunday service at St Mary’s Church in Ripple at 10:50am.
In the Hanley’s and Welland, our service is at Hanley Swan Church at 10:50am.
And in Upton and the Hook, our service is at Upton Parish Church, beginning at 10:45am. This will be a joint service with our partners in Upton Churches Together.
Please join us at any of the services.
Why a Bright Lights Party?
On Halloween this year we’re hosting a Bright Lights Party at Upton Parish Church. It’s going to be a great family fun night with bouncy castle, games, big screen video games, food and loads of fun.
To find out about tickets go to our online booking page here.
And if you want to know more about why a Bright Lights party – take a look at this short video.
There’s a new vicar in town…
This article was originally published in the Bridge Magazine, October issue.
Where are you from?
I grew up in the North-East of England, the son of a journalist, moved to Sheffield when I was 18 to go to university (studied Economics) and after graduating spent the next ten years or so working for Rotherham Training and Enterprise Council in various capacities – before training to be a vicar in 2002.
Ordained in 2005, I spent four years working with a church on South Tyneside, and then seven years in New Barnet, on the north edge of London.
While I was in Sheffield I met Carol (who hails from Malvern and was training to be a Landscape Architect). Marriage and six kids followed, along with lots of trips back to Malvern – and now we’re back in Worcestershire for good.
Six kids – are you mad?
No – They play together, pray together and do life together. It’s wonderful – on a good day. Other days its hard work, and requires some pretty big lifestyle sacrifices. I remember thinking when we had our fourth child was born that I’d blown my final hope of ever having a fancy car. So now you’ll see me driving a battered 10-year old Renault minibus around. It’s not a car I’d ever imagined driving – but God is like that – he gives us what we need not what we want.
What are your hopes for your time as Priest in Charge of the Benefice of Hanley Castle, Hanley Swan and Welland; and the Benefice of Upton on Severn, Ripple, Earl’s Croome & Hill Croome with Strensham?
Broadly speaking I’ve got three priorities for our time here.
First of all – to encourage discipleship.
Being a disciple of Jesus isn’t just a one-time decision to pick a side in the religious free-for-all, it’s an ongoing commitment to actively living out the values Jesus taught and demonstrated in his own life, underwritten by a growing dependence upon prayer and the Holy Spirit.
Second – is what I call “getting the shop-window right.”
When we’re out shopping, there’s nothing catches our eye more than a well laid-out shop window. The goods look inviting, the colours and lighting entice. First impressions really matter.
Sad to say, many people’s first impression of church services isn’t as captivating – so one of my challenges over the coming years is to listen to the experiences of those outside our church communities to learn how our churches can do better.
One thing we’ve started straight away is getting rid of that awful name that our family of churches goes by – “the benefice of Hanley etc etc. “ It’s so long you probably didn’t even read the whole thing the first time!
I’m proposing we call our family of churches the “Hope Church Family” and our new website (www.hopechurchfamily.org) is a great place to visit to find out all about the various things going on in the individual churches. Do give it a visit – when you see it all together there’s a lot going on. And while you’re on the website, do sign up for our monthly newsletter which will tell you more of what’s going on.
My third priority is planning for the future.
Sad to say, some of the churches have only a very limited provision for children. Over time I hope to see that change – because without children our church congregations will never know a long-term future.
At my last church God blessed us with considerable growth in our children’s work – and I believe it can happen here too. But it does mean we might have to change a few things along the way so that children and young families can more easily participate.
It sounds like you’re going to be busy then!
Yes! But I also know I need to get to know our communities better and understand more of the rhythm of rural life. That will take time – Rome wasn’t built in a day. But it was built – so if you’re the sort of person who likes to build things and make a difference – please get in touch – we’d love to get you involved!
Barry Unwin
Vicar, Hope Church Family
Wing Walk Plane Sailing for first-time flyer
Congratulations to Mary Purser, church warden at St James, Welland for completing her charity wing walk, and making the BBC website!
To see video of her flight and the story on the BBC website, click here.