Dear Friends,
2024 seems to continuing to move at pace with the autumn now in sight, so it felt like the right time to send out another Vicar’s Update to share with you some of what is going on at St Michael’s.
Spirit of Art Festival – 27th September – 5th October 2024
Between the 27th September and 5th October, we will be holding our first Arts Festival ‘Spirit of Art’. The festival will include visual arts, floristry, literature, music and cinema along with workshops giving people the opportunity to try acrylics, photography and ceramics. Our hope with this festival is to celebrate art, in its various formats, and what it offers us as individuals and a community. It’s our hope to welcome lots of visitors from across the parish and beyond during this festival.
You can find out more about the festival on our website at www.bramhall.church/spirit-of-art, where you can download a festival programme and also book tickets. In the coming days we hope to take delivery of printed programmes so you can take handfuls to give to friends and neighbours. We will be encouraging people to buy tickets online, through our website, but tickets can also be bought from the parish office, and with some events, on the door.
As with any festival, we are looking for volunteers to help make the festival happen. Volunteer roles include welcoming, selling tickets, making refreshments, serving at the bar, and being present in the art galleries. If you are able to support the festival as a volunteer, please could you add your name to the sign up sheet in church, or email the office to let them know.
I am really excited about this festival and hope that it is the first of many and something that will get bigger in future years.
You may think that this is enough to be getting on with going into the autumn, but I want to tell you about 3 other priorities I have for the next few months.
Thanksgiving Campaign
The first is our Thanksgiving Campaign which will be happening throughout September and October. On Sunday 8th September, I will be giving a bit of an update on our finances and preaching around the principles of giving. The new Archdeacon of Macclesfield will be with us on Sunday 29th September at the 10am service where she has asked to talk on the theme of generosity. Pledge Sunday will be on Sunday 6th October where we will be asking everyone to renew their pledges for giving in advance of the start of 2025.
Pastoral Care
The second relates to Pastoral Care. I have been wanting to get a better organised system of pastoral care off the ground for nearly the whole of the 7 years I have been at St Michaels. This has been presented in different shapes over the years and been delayed for all sorts of reasons including the pandemic. Jo Oughton and Tricia Munn have been working with me to get a new system ready to launch, which I am hoping to do in September. The new system will be a responsive system offering pastoral care as need arises but particularly offering it to those on our prayer lists. I am looking to build ideally a team of 10 volunteers to work with me in offering pastoral care to the parish. This would see team members roughly visiting 2 people a month. If you would like more information or are interested in offering yourself to be part of this team, please would you get in touch with Jo Oughton (jo.oughton@bramhall.church) or Tricia Munn (tricia.munn@btinternet.com) (0161 439 39389) by the end of August. I hope to offer 2 training sessions in September with the scheme getting going from that point onwards.
Prayer and Bible Study
The third priority relates to discipleship particularly thinking about prayer but also bible study as well. It has been on my mind for some time now that we could do with praying together more often, I certainly cant remember the last time we had a prayer meeting at St Michael’s. Prayer meetings can sometimes sound daunting or like they are for ‘the professionals’ but a prayer gathering is simply an opportunity where brothers and sisters come together intentionally to offer their concerns to Lord in a community setting. So from September there will be a monthly prayer gathering at church on 3rd Wednesday between 7pm & 8pm. It will be a chance for us to gather as a church to pray which will include some teaching about prayer, some communal prayer and then individual prayer too, all around some gathered resources. If you are confident in prayer, please come and join me, if you aren’t too sure about it – come and find out, as we seek to pray together more often. For September, the prayer gathering will happen on Wednesday 25th September (4th Wednesday) so it doesn’t clash with the already booked PCC meeting.
Related to this, I have taken the decision to revise how we do our prayer lists. This is something I have been thinking and praying through for some time and feel now the is the right time to implement. From September we will no longer publish the prayer lists in SMT week by week. Instead, there will be one prayer list which will be published monthly, which will include the names of people, alongside which there will be a short explanation of what that person would value prayer for. I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I look at the current prayer lists, I read through the names wondering what to pray, sometimes I’m not sure who it is I am praying for. Whilst I don’t need to know these things, as God already knows, having a little more information can be helpful. The new prayer list will be available for those that wish to use it at the monthly prayer gatherings. If you are someone that can’t make the prayer gathering but wish to have a copy of the prayer list, then please have a conversation with me.
On the subject of bible study before the pandemic I ran a weekly bible study in costa on a Wednesday afternoon, this then went online when needed. I really miss these sessions so from September on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays at 5pm I will be offering bible study again. A session normally includes working through a chapter of a book asking questions like: ‘what is being said in the passage? what was the author trying to say? What does it mean for me today?’ For September I am going to run these sessions at church, but would love to find a venue in the village that we could use going forwards.
Finally Jess and I would like to extend an invitation to you to join us on Sunday 15th September as we baptise Phoebe during the 10am service. We look forward to welcoming you alongside members of St Saviours, Great Moor.
To echo the words of Paul that we heard last Sunday ‘I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God
Regards,
Revd Calum Piper,
Vicar
