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A year in the life of St. Mary Magdalen, Sheet
2006 - 2007
Each year the Parish Office collates reports for the Annual Parish Church Meeting and creates a booklet showing the work and life of the community of faith at St. Mary Magdalen.
This year you can download the booklet in Pdf format (3 Mb - so mainly for those with Broadband - or a great deal of patience!) by clicking on this link
Vicar’s Message
I approach this year’s Annual Parochial Church Meeting with a sense of great encouragement. It is encouraging to see the areas of vitality and growth in the life of St Mary Magdalen. So many of you work so hard and give so much towards our shared life that I feel very humbled. The most obvious contributions come from those who occupy some special role or responsibility in our life. Thanks are particularly due to Sylvia and Ambrose in their role as Church Wardens and for the huge amount of support and encouragement that they give to me; to Charlie our treasurer and his work behind the scenes keeping our finances in order; to our Readers Gary, Mike and Gareth for all that they contribute to our worship and to Doug for the very special contribution he makes to our life – he is always challenging and often prophetic – gifts for us to treasure. Yet we must also highlight the many whose contributions are no less recognised but who, due to space restrictions, cannot be mentioned individually. The list of names at the back of this booklet stands as a testimony to the huge amount that many people do – thank you to you all.
One area that has been particularly encouraging this year is the work that has gone on with the children. It has been wonderful to see large numbers of youngsters coming into church from Kids’Church at Parish Communions and gathering to worship with us at our Family and Young Family Services. Thank you to all of you who are working so hard to make Kids’ Church and our All Age Worship appealing and relevant.
It has been encouraging too to see our vision statement of Encountering God, Encouraging one another and Engaging with the World taking root in the life of St Mary Magdalen. This seemed to happen all the more through our weekend away at St Rhadagund’s in March. Here we were reminded of the need to remember that we are firmly held by God who releases us to both encourage one another and to be involved in the world. Both of these involve some risk and it is only when we know that we are secure in God that we can afford to take those risks. I hope and pray that we will not be paralysed by fear and doubt - but rooted in God - we will be able to spur one another on to the work that God has called us to.
There are a whole variety of ways in which this attitude does need to be worked out in the life of the church; as we talk about the ways in which God is at work among us; as we meet to study and pray in small groups; as we seek to be involved in our local community and seek change in our world and as we reflect on how God is calling us to use our money. In short we need to allow our dependence on God to affect, and indeed unsettle, every area of our lives.
