A very happy Easter to you all!
We’re rapidly approaching the time when we will be presenting our Mission Action Plan to St Mary’s congregation for your comment and reaction. As many of you will know, this has been a project of some nine months duration, during which we have worked hard to consult widely across the congregation, to listen prayerfully to God and to discuss fully as a Church Council. We’re now preparing to share this work with you, which will take place at our 11am Service on Sunday 26th April, which will also be the day of our Annual Church Meeting.
We want this to be a celebration of the whole of our life together at St Mary’s, and we are extremely grateful to the 8.30am congregation for agreeing to join us at 11 on this one occasion. We hope as many as possible of you will be able to be there and to join in a shared lunch afterwards (bring and share food and drink please!).
To give you a little taster, however, there are three general areas of work we are going to propose. The specifics are still being worked on and will be ready by the end of the month. These three are:
Forming Christ’s Disciples:
Encouraging New Faith and Deepening Existing Faith
Tending God’s People:
Caring For Each Other and Reaching out in Love
Building the Common Good:
Working for a healthy and just community in Battersea and beyond
In order to build these areas of work, we need to ensure that the time, talents and treasure of the church (including its fabric) are developed and deployed to fulfil these central tasks and so this work will be supported by two other areas of work:
Nurturing Time and Talents
Stewarding & Developing God’s Treasure
All of this will be fleshed out more on the 26th April in a presentation from various members of the church who have been working on this plan. Naturally everything needs to be done so that we don’t overstretch ourselves or go at a pace that won’t be sustainable. But we believe these areas are at the heart of what St Mary’s people want our church to be and do and we are excited about sharing this with you.
You are warmly invited to come on 26th April and to respond creatively with your comments, questions and reactions.
Simon Butler
On behalf of St Mary’s Church Council