New St Caths Plus Community Worker Post

We are now seeking to employ a full time Community Worker to head up our St Caths Plus project, taking over from Esther who has been working two days a week since the summer, reaching out to serve older people in the community of Pontypridd.

The new full-time St Caths Plus Community Worker will be responsible for developing our work with the range of older people in Pontypridd, from those who retire young to centenarians. This will include meeting their physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs. Working with older people throughout the wider community, the post holder will aim to enhance people’s older years by developing a range of social activities from lunches to tea dances, concerts and trips away, as well as putting on a variety of daytime clubs offering everything from Welsh lessons to keep fit, and ensuring a strong pastoral care network. Much of this work will be based in the Community Hall we own in the centre of Pontypridd.

St Catherine’s is a growing church with a simple desire to see people’s lives made better. The St Caths Plus Community Worker is a key leadership post at St Catherine’s and needs someone with creativity, initiative and a real desire to serve older people.

The post is funded by the Lottery, and in our first round of advertising, we omitted to advertise in Welsh which we had promised to do. We apologise for this, and have agreed to re-advertise in order to keep the terms of the grant which the Lottery have very generously given us for this work. The new application date is July 2nd, and interviews will be on the weekend of July 17th and 18th, though if this is a problem candidates should simply let us know and we will find a way around it! The new links to more details, and to the Welsh version, will be here soon. For now, if you are interested, contact Marcus at vicar@st-caths.org. We hope the new holder of the post will begin with us on September 1st.

Happy Easter

A very happy Easter from St Catherine's! From our Maundy Thursday meal, with David Tazzini-Lloyd providing excellent entertainment with his superb magic show, and Lesley & Esther arranging a wonderful evening for all of us, through to Good Friday's profound and moving afternoon service led by Aled Edwards, not forgetting our prayer breakfast on Saturday morning and our read through of St Mark on Saturday evening, before all our Sunday services, we had a terrific Easter!

Easter Sunday was truly wonderful. The usual warm and caring 8am congregation heard a lovely Resurrection sermon from Gill Tuck, and were treated to breakfast afterwards by Val.

The 11am service had a little of everything - Trish spoke movingly of the power of Resurrection, and finished her talk with her daughter Gemma singing to us from John 3:16. Beautiful. The music, led by Dan, was excellent throughout - it's good to have the full band back!

At 6pm Marcus wove themes from across St John's Gospel into his Resurrection talk, with Gill and Andy leading us gently on closer into Jesus' presence. We also prayed for Karsten, back with us for the weekend and now hoping to be selected to train for ordination, and it was good to have Emma show us her sash and crown as Miss University GB before the service started too! Her work for the Joshua Foundation, serving children suffering from terminal cancer, is something her watching grandfather (and vicar's warden!) is rightly proud of.

Thanks too to all who worked so hard preparing the church for the weekend - providing flowers, cleaning the place, and setting out the amazing Easter bonnets from the children of Maes-y-Coed Primary School. Thank you all!

Above all, we were reminded again and again of the powerful love of God. Love that goes to any and every length that we might not be trapped in the brokenness of this world, but lifted up with the Rising Jesus to know God, the author of all love; love that is big enough to fill a universe, and personal enough to be just for you and just for me.