Vicar Marcus Green announces departure from St Catherine's at Annual Congregation Meeting

Revd Marcus Green tonight announced the end of his eleven year time as vicar of St Catherine's at the church's annual congregational meeting with the words, "This is my eleventh Annual Congregation Meeting, and my last".

The wardens and staff knew in advance, but the news came as a surprise to the members of the church.

Marcus will be taking up a post working at Leeds University in August, and stressed that until then he will still remain focussed on the parish and the very many challenges that face everyone. He spoke of the community projects, which he reported are in "rude health", and of the church's finances which are less robust, and of the main thrust of the church - worship, evangelism and compassion, which he drew from an exposition of John 3:16.

He also pointed out that although losing a vicar can feel a very negative thing for a church community, these are exciting days for the people of St Catherine's, and that he has every confidence that the Lord will bring somebody wonderful to lead the church in its next phase of life. Easter is "a wonderful time of hope re-born and new beginnings, which is just where we all suddenly find ourselves" he commented; "these are exciting days ahead for all of us, in different ways, and ones we must cover in prayer."

He closed by thanking the congregation for allowing him eleven very happy years, saying "I would not have swapped them for anything".

Easter at St Catherine's

Our Easter programme is now available! Click here for the poster. (Or here if that link doesn't seem to work.)

We begin on Maundy Thursday, April 21st, with a Supper & Quiz for all the family at 7pm in the Hall. Following our very successful Harvest Quiz, this will be hosted by Trish & David Tazzini-Lloyd, with Hot-pot style food provided by Lesley Wilson & Anne Swann.

Good Friday will see many of us participate in the town walk of witness which begins at the Museum at midday, finishing with the service in front of Alfred's. Marcus will be leading this. We will then continue to church for our quiet afternoon reflection service, which again Marcus will lead, from 1pm till 3pm.

On Holy Saturday, we have three events. In the morning running concurrently we will have a coffee morning in church and a children's craft event in the hall. These both start at 10am, and will come together at some point when our Puppet Theatre will perform an Easter piece in church for everyone.

In the evening, we will hear St Mark's Gospel read to us in full, starting at 7pm.

On Easter Sunday, our three services will be at their usual times, and we look forwards to celebrating the Lord's resurrection together - 8am for a quiet traditional communion, 11am for our main Easter celebration, and 6pm for an informal end to the day.

Everyone is welcome to all these events (though the Thursday supper will be ticketed - email vicar@st-caths.org if you need details) and we would especially welcome any wider friends or family of the church to come along at Easter time. If you haven't been before, or are thinking about faith perhaps for the first time, or perhaps as something you are returning to, Easter is a great opportunity to come along and remember what really lies at the heart of what we believe, and why. Please join us!

Lottery News

The Big Lottery said No.

They turned down our application for a grant towards our church hall renovation & link, saying we had not shown sufficient need for the application to be successful.

Obviously, we are all very disappointed. We were hoping it would be the final piece in our funding jigsaw & it would allow us to begin our amazing renovation project soon after Easter. But this is a time to see what we do have - and what we don't - and to work out where we go from here.

Five years ago when we began to get a vision for what we needed to do with our church hall, our community projects were tiny. We had one part time worker and a handful of toddlers. That was it. Now, with all our toddler groups, children, parents, grandparents & carers, not to mention all the older people who come to the St Caths Plus events, we have some 200 people a week come through our projects, and two full time workers marshalling a team of volunteers. In five years! For a small church like us, this is frankly amazing. Our aim has always been to serve our community with the love of God, making people's lives better - and we are doing it.

For sure, our building is seriously sub-standard. And yet the work is happening.

So: though we have lost this grant we haven't lost everything. And yes, we haven't just lost this grant. The CFAP (Welsh Assembly) money we gained last year, all £300,000 of it, has gone too - it was time bound, which means that we had to find all of our funding by the end of March or we lost it. They were also surprised we were turned down by Big Lottery. But the people at CFAP are being wonderfully supportive, and are helping us as we re-apply for that grant in the next financial year. Though it has gone, we can ask again. We still have a lot of good will, and far more community support now than we had eighteen months ago when we last asked. We turned in 80 letters of support then - this time we have in one morning produced 75!

We are also approaching the Coalfields Regeneration Trust. They do not yet know if they will have a budget for grants in the next financial year, but are accepting applications, and so we have sent in an application there. We do still have the Aggregates Levy Fund money - but we need to spend that in the next 12 months, so we are again in a race against time.

Knocked down, but not out - in St Paul's words - would be a fair description of how we feel. But God is good. And we love doing the work we are committed to, and helping the community we are proud to belong to, and so we will continue to seek help in renewing our buildings that everyone may be blessed.

If you would like to help, please either get one of the letter forms from church between now and April 10th, write in or just email vicar@st-caths.org adding your support for our Hall Renovation & Link Project in aid of our community projects and our re-application to CFAP following the withdrawal of their February 2010 offer of £300,000. (That wording is helpful in identifying everything.) Please date your letter, give your address and name. The more community support we can show the better!

And pray. We always pray. Thank you.