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.

1.  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. 
2. 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).
3. 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
   
4. 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