Category Archives: St Mark’s Church

St George's Church, St John's Church, St Mark's Church

Safeguarding

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Most people will be aware of the safeguarding problems that the national church has had.  To help address this, and to help ensure that children and vulnerable adults are kept safe the national church has created new safeguarding procedures, which the Diocese and the Parish have adopted.  The Parish is now in the process of implementing these new procedures.

As a result of this we will be:

  • Drawing up a list of all church activities, together with leaders and assistants.
  • Circulating a “know your safeguarding role” to all people working with children or vulnerable adults.
  • Asking all people working with children or vulnerable adults to sign the new confidential declaration form.
  • Implementing the “Safe Recruitment” procedures for people taking on new roles.
  • Creating risk assessments for all church activities.
  • Working with regular hall bookers to ensure that they have adequate safeguarding procedures and public liability insurance.

It will take us some time to do this, but we have no choice, both because this is best practice, and because we wish to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults using our services (in the wider sense) or our buildings.

Alan Crawley

St Mark's Church

Inclusive Church

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The Parish is considering signing up to Inclusive Church, an organisation which encourages churches to look at who might not be coming into church because for some reason they feel it isn’t for them or they cannot do so. The reasons may be many and varied – perhaps it is an economic issue, culture, race, disability, a mental health issue, sexuality. Inclusive Church encourages churches think about these reasons and can help churches be truly welcoming.

Many churches and individuals have joined Inclusive Church and they are united around the following statement of belief:

“We believe in inclusive Church – church which does not discriminate, on any level, on grounds of economic power, gender, mental health, physical ability, race or sexuality. We believe in Church which welcomes and serves all people in the name of Jesus Christ; which is scripturally faithful; which seeks to proclaim the Gospel afresh for each generation; and which, in the power of the Holy Spirit, allows all people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Jesus Christ.”

On July 23, the Very Rev’d Dianna Gwilliams, Dean of Guildford Cathedral and chair of Inclusive Church, visited St Mark’s and spoke about joining Inclusive Church and it was decided that during August the clergy will preach on different aspects of inclusion and then the PCC will vote on the parish joining.

Stella Wiseman

Social Events, St Mark's Church

Arts and Music festival at St Mark’s 20 – 22nd Oct. 2017

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Is this what they call divine inspiration, or is it just a form of madness? Anyway, I blame Dave Walker. It’s not as if we need things to occupy our time. However, the odd comment from Dave on how suitable St Mark’s would be for an art exhibition suddenly set wheels turning in Lesley’s and my fevered brains:-

“Let’s have an Arts and Music festival!”

After checking who would be available for such an event, we settled on Friday 20th to Sunday 22nd October.

We’re still working out the details. So far we’ve only had one meeting (actually over a rather convivial dinner) to discuss the general outline. However, it’s been quite encouraging how many people have been in favour of the concept and offered suggestions.

The main ideas to date are:-

Friday Night (probably 7 – 9:30 or 10-ish). A concert. We’re still sorting out the acts, but we’ll have a couple of pieces on Emily (the pipe organ), a rock band, a rock-a-billy/country band, a choral group and probably others. There will also be an artistic display, or displays, we’ll set up on the Friday afternoon.

Saturday daytime Various workshops of artistic and musical nature. We’ve had several possible offers, including stone cutting and a recording studio. We’ll definitely have various painting, singing and instrumental workshops. More details to follow.

Saturday evening (probably 7 – 10-ish) a Ceilidh. We’ll clear one side of the church for dancing and have tables in the other half. The idea is to have a mixture of dancing and other events, hopefully some stemming from the workshops that took place during the day. There will be quite an early finish, as we’ll have to get the church ready for the service the following morning. We’ll possibly have a bar, but it will be bring your own food, as this is an extra complication I’m not sure any of us could face!

Sunday morning This will be a service. Lesley (S) will lead it. As she is an LLM, it will be a service of the word, rather than a communion service. There’s going to be a lot of singing, of the “Amazing Grace”, and “Go tell it on the mountain” type of song/hymn.

By the end of this, we’ll probably be dead on our feet, but there’s been the suggestion of a bring and share lunch at St Mark’s. This would seem to be a fitting way to end up. (Just prop Lesley and myself up in a corner and carry on!)

General funding would be by asking for donations and having collection plates, rather than charging entry to events. We’d like to make it as accessible as possible. Any profits will go to the General Parish funds (they need all the help they can get) and the Emily restoration fund.

So watch this space, details to follow in as many ways we can think of to publicise the event. If you’ve any good ideas and/or would like to help, please contact us.

Bob and Lesley Shatwell