28 Sep Important Notice; Service change TRIAL @ St Mary’s

Posted at 14:10h in News by

Service trial for St Mary’s

Since we arrived, we have been looking at everything that goes on in the Parish and assessing the services available for all groups of people and those who do not yet come to church. We want everyone to come and meet with Jesus at St John’s and St Mary’s. We really value both the excellent traditional worship and the more contemporary worship at St Mary’s and the importance of giving different people different ways to come to God. When the St Mary’s 10.00 service split into two in 2014, the PCC’s intention was to have a trial for 6 months of the Reflective service with traditional music at 9.15 and the Lively service with contemporary music at 11.00 then switch round to see which worked best but for various reasons this did not happen. Having taken advice from the PCC and leaders, we consider now is a good time to honour the PCC decision and try them the other way round for a trial period of four months. Thus, there will be a Trial Service Switch at St Mary’s for a four month trial period from September to December 2016.

In November, we will launch a Service Consultation across St Mary’s and St John’s in which everybody will be invited to give their thoughts on the service pattern at both churches.

The pattern for September to December 2016 will be:

St Mary’s
8.00     Said Communion
9.15      Lively Service with Contemporary worship
Holy Communion monthly; All Age monthly
11.00    Reflective Service with Traditional worship
Holy Communion weekly

St John’s
10.30    Morning Praise
Holy Communion monthly; All Age monthly

This is simply a switch of time for the current 9.15 and 11.00 services.

NO OTHER CHANGES are intended for the style of worship at either service. Both the excellent traditional style worship with the choir and the contemporary style worship with the band are extremely valuable to St Mary’s church and will be retained and developed as appropriate.

We hope you will come and try all the services and that you will prayerfully work with us as we seek to discover the best possible service pattern for everyone at St John’s and St Mary’s. Thank you so much.

Yours in Christ,
Jonny and Cathy
24th July 2016