Annual Parish Meetings

Annual Parish Meeting 2025

           will be held on Sunday 6th Aprilat 11.30am in church after the Parish Eucharist.

Rector’s Letter 2025

Dear friends, 

Last year (I think) I said at this point in the APCM, amongst all the things we were doing, and all the plans we were making, that my Confessor and Spiritual Director (a very wise priest) had said to me ‘make sure you leave room for the miracles’. 

He said it with a twinkle in his eye, but he was also deadly serious. Amongst all our planning and doing, he wanted me to make sure that I made space for God to do something, rather than imagine (errrr) that it was me or us who were the main players on this stage.

It’s obviously silly when you put it like that, to imagine that we’re the centre of this picture, but it’s amazing how easy it is to fall into behaving like that! Everything being about our plans, our work, our ideas, our abilities; and outcomes that we measure and value.

Well, I look back on the last year with huge gratitude and delight. We left room for the miracles, (and even if we didn’t they happened anyway!)

80 people at the Parish Eucharist has become a fairly ordinary event, rather than just Christmas or Easter. It really, really isn’t a numbers game. I mean that. But we are here to worship God, and to help everyone else in our parish to worship God too - so more people doing that here is a good thing. Everything we are and everything we do flows out of the Sunday Eucharist, and it flows back into the Sunday Eucharist. This is a good sign that this is indeed the truly Christian flow we are living.

We have some wonderful young people (children and adults) serving, worshipping, being baptized and confirmed and all the rest. What a privilege it is to be alongside them in their life pilgrimage.

We have also laid to rest some very dear friends in Dr Simon Freeman, Geoffrey Rivett and other funerals. This is very sad, but also a privilege. And helping people to live well in friendship with God, and die well in friendship with God is actually our job, and a job well done too. (Please take that idea in the right, loving spirit with which it is said).

Our congregation is increasingly representative of the whole parish, with more and more people worshipping here who live the length of the parish - north and south. This growing diversity, representing the reality of the worldwide Body of Christ more and more, is also a great joy. And directly flows out of our Mission Action Plan. 

We also continue to grow as a sanctuary and house of prayer for workers and visitors who (along with other residents we do and don’t see on a Sunday) draw Living Water from this well in the form of 20 minute midweek worship. I really want to stress how our rich pattern of almost daily midweek services is a core piece of our identity now. 

    And I want to thank, heartily, everyone who supports its quiet flourishing in ones and twos and threes, and who give me the privilege of praying with you for everyone who lives, works and spends their time here, day by day. We are the parish church - we are open as much as possible. We are a house of prayer where services happen like clockwork, and we fulfil our God given mission not just for us, but for everyone who never comes here - we come here to turn the cogs of Divine Love at the heart of the universe, for the good of all. It is very, very special. Thank you for being part of it.

We’ve also had failures. Good. That means we’ve left room for the miracles, because at the same time as people coming here who we hadn’t reached for a while - young people, the north of the parish etc, Little St Luke’s our strategic outreach, funded, planned, launched… flopped. So back to the drawing board, or (rather) back to prayer and attentiveness to the Spirit’s movements when I get back from sabbatical, to make sure we are present to the whole geographic parish, not just tucked away down here in the bottom corner. 

Our doors are open, our hearts and minds are open, our rich and deep life of worship is (I hope) an open invitation to a confused and weary world. This virtuous cycle of openness has, I am sure, been used by God in all the ways we’ve talked about so far today to bring new life and flourishing. And the thing is, it’s not rocket science. It is us doing that which is our DNA. It’s us, swimming with the current, if you like, rather than fighting it. 

That is to say, it is you faithfully praying and worshipping. It is those hidden prayer warriors (as my African churchy friends often call them) praying for this church and its mission day after day, in bed first or last thing, when you light a candle here on the way somewhere. Whatever. It is us opening the door, ringing the bell, and praying hour by hour day by day. It is us responding to the so called ‘secularisation’ and ‘individualisation’ of our part of the world with thoughtfulness, kindness, and deep worship - plugged into the depths of the Christian Tradition, ancient truths that are always fresh and new. We aren’t chasing numbers, because we don’t judge our success that way, so God blesses us with people because we’re not seeking people: together, we’re seeking God. 

Basically, I want to say: thank you. Thank you for all you are and do in this place. Thank you for the privilege of having me along for the ride. Thank you for keeping the main thing the main thing, and thank you for doing it with such a spirit of depth and authenticity and fun and open-heartedness.

Thank you.

Fr Jack