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.

what a drama

On Saturday March 5th the St Caths Plus Drama Group held their first public performance - an afternoon matinee, with wonderful tea thrown in for good measure.

There were monologues, dramatic readings, a little Joyce Grenfall, wonderful compering by Ron Eveleigh, and the whole group gave a terrific afternoon's entertainment to the good crowd that had gathered. Everything was capped off with a rendition of "I Will Follow Him" from Sister Act...

Credit must go to Anne Swann for all her hard work and vision in getting this wonderful group off the ground, and in organising what was clearly a gargantuan effort.

St Caths Plus is part of our community work, aimed at providing all kinds of activities and groups mainly for older people - but by no means exclusively so! Anyone can join in! It was lovely to see one or two youngsters alongside the "more mature", and in fact the age range was very varied in the gathered audience, which just goes to show how popular the folk who come to the St Caths Plus events are.

Cakes & sandwiches consumed, tea drunk, people entertained & the budding thespians of St Caths Plus were exhausted - but we all hope ready to begin planning their next show. This was a definite success!

Cafe Church

Every month, once a month, usually about two thirds of the way through the month, we turn the evening service into something a little different. Instead of all facing the speaker at the front, we find ourselves arranged around tables, with candles and flowers and cakes spread out before us & coffee & juices & chocolate served up for us to drink - Cafe Church.

This month, we had the extra pleasure of a return visit from Matt Truelove, a former member of our youth group, and occasional worship leader with us. Playing alongside Marcus for the worship songs, he then sang three songs by himself, and it was a real pleasure for everyone to enjoy the way Matt shapes a song and invites us on a journey of praise with him.

Fortunately, someone was carrying an iPhone, so the moment was not lost! Click on the picture below and you can enjoy Matt singing a song called Beautiful by Phil Wickham. We were delighted Matt was with us at the Christmas Carol Service & hope very much to have Mr Truelove back with us again at the Cafe Church before long.



If you've not experienced the Cafe Church before, or it's been a while, perhaps you should come along to our next one on March 20th?

Pontypridd Carol Service Postponed till Dec 22nd

Due to the amazing amount of snow we have experienced over the last two days, and following a weather forecast of more snow to be expected over the weekend, the Pontypridd Carol Service has been postponed from this Sunday evening, 19th December, to Wednesday December 22nd at 7pm.

This is the first time the Carol Service has been affected by weather for some considerable time, but due to the large number of both participants (choirs & full military band) and congregation expected (usually in the hundreds)  we have had to make the most sensible decision.

So - come along on Wednesday evening and enjoy what promises to be a wonderful occasion! With some amazing surprises and fantastic quality music. The Pontypridd Carol Service is always a Christmas highlight - and though we will be a little late this year, we will be better than ever. See you Wednesday!

Christmas Programme

Our Christmas Programme at St Catherine's is now available for everyone!

We begin on December 12th with our Christingle Service - a wonderful reminder of all God's love, wrapped up with oranges and sweets and the first inklings of Christmas music... plus we'll have the tree in place!

On December 19th a bonus feature is our Puppet Nativity which will take place during the 11am service, but the big highlight of the day is the annual Pontypridd Carol Service at 6pm. As last year, this is the RCT Civic Carol Service, we are expecting all kinds of wonderful features including readers from many loal organisations, the RCT Youth Choir and the children of Ysgol Evan James. Do come early - we tend to be quite full!

Over the 24th and 25th we have a midnight service on Christmas Eve starting at 11.30pm, and a lovely service for all the family on Christmas morning at 9.30am. Carols, candles, and a chance to worship Jesus. Come & join us for a classic Christmas in 2010!

Success!

The Aggregates Levy Fund Wales have awarded our Church Hall project £300,000!

We are completely amazed and totally grateful to them. The application was made in August, and since then we have been in conversation about our eligibility for the fund, as well as how the nature of our project affects people in Pontypridd and what we hope to achieve when we complete the building work.

At the end of September we were able to demonstrate the site to some members of the fund, and to explain to them our vision for helping make lives better here in our community. This resulted in the award, which includes £50,000 which must be spent on environmentally sustainable parts of the building project. We are investigating the option of integrating a new biomass boiler to heat the whole site.  

Obviously we are all very excited! This project has been a part of our lives for four years now, and it feels like we are coming to the sharp edge of things. We need one more grant to come through and we can start the building phase. The possibility of actually opening the completed works at New Year 2012 is something of a dream for us, and one we are beginning to allow ourselves to dream.

God is good. We are trying to be faithful to our calling as his church in this place to serve as many people as we can in transforming lives and building community, loving our neighbours as ourselves, caring for young and old, and it is truly humbling when organisations from our national government recognise our work and our vision and decide to help us in such a wonderful way. Thank you!

There is still work to be done. One grant remains outstanding, and if we do not achieve it by February 10th 2011 we lose half of what we have gained so far. Pray for those working on; and pray that we might make this final grant so that we can renovate the hall and build better lives for all sorts of people in our community.

PodCaths is Back!

PodCaths is Back!

Our very own podcast has taken a break for the last few months, but the Wednesday lunchtime Bible study group that meets in the Vicarage has started up again in the last few weeks and has already recorded two brand new editions of PodCaths.

Each episode follows a group discussion through one of our Sunday Bible readings, and lasts around half an hour. You can find it by clicking onto the PodCaths page on our website, or by searching on iTunes for PodCaths Marcus Green which should take you to the right place! (Our emblem on iTunes is a little picture of the St Catherine's Spire!)

PodCaths October 6th 2010 is already "live", and the recording from October 13th 2010 should be available any second!