Tag Archives: Wendy Edwards

Caravan Jazz Videos

15/06/2019 Lesley Crawley Leave a comment

Did you miss the opportunity to see the Caravan Jazz event on May 4th, when Wendy Edwards and the Teddy’s Café Bar Jazzmen played music and told stories from the life of Ted and Jean Parratt, Wendy’s parents? Fear not, it can be seen by clicking the below links, videos thanks to Seamus Flanagan. The evening raised money for the Kitty Milroy murals, at St Mark’s Church, Upper Hale:

Part 1

Part 2

Featured are Michael Atkinson R.I.P. bass guitar/ukelele, Kendall Gordon – keyboard, Hugh Lister- clarinet, David Mason-trumpet, Geoff Rideout-guitar, Roger Sinclair- keyboard, Wendy Edwards- vocals, Melissa Heathcote-vocals, Mike Twiddy-vocals and Frances Whewell-piano

If you would like to donate to the Murals fund then please click on the icon below.

Leadership, News Releases, St George's Church, St John's Church, St Mark's Church

Ministry team grows again

27/06/2018 Stella Wiseman 2 Comments

The ministry team in the parish has grown again. With the licensing of Wendy and Craig as Licensed Lay Ministers (LLMs) last Saturday the team has grown to three full-time clergy, three LLMs and two retired clergy who still conduct services, preach and carry out pastoral work in the parish.

Wendy Edwards and Craig Nobbs were both licensed to the parish by the Bishop of Guildford, the Right Rev’d Andrew Watson in a service at St Paul’s, Dorking.

Wendy, the daughter of renowned local journalists Ted Parratt and the late Jean Parratt, started her training in Southwark, but returned to her childhood home of Farnham in 2017, following her mother’s death the previous year, and continued her training with the Diocese of Guildford.

“I returned to the church in 2007 after a very difficult time in my life, and I felt a calling to ministry but it was too early,” she said. “The feeling came again at the end of 2013 and I started exploring it and began my training in 2014. Licensed Lay Ministry is a preaching and teaching ministry in a pastoral context and I will have a particular funeral ministry. In my previous job I worked as a chartered legal executive specialising in wills and probate. I always supported people around the time of deaths in the family through the legal side and felt a call to support them through ministry.”

Wendy will be particularly attached to St John’s, Hale, the church she chose to go to when she returned to Farnham, in part because she had been a bridesmaid there twice in the late 1960s.

Craig Nobbs was already an LLM when he moved to Farnham 18 months ago but was licensed to another parish and wanted to continue his ministry in his new home. He has been relicensed to the Parish of Badshot Lea and Hale and his ministry will mostly be at St George’s, Badshot Lea.

Speaking after the service Craig said: “The service was out of this world and an affirmation of what I am doing in the parish. This parish is one with a big heart. During the licensing service I was conscious of waves of love from both the parish and from God himself. What kept going through my mind was a line ‘Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven’ (from the hymn Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven), as that has been my experience.”

Craig’s ministry will mostly be at the weekend as he works full-time in London as a Whitehall civil servant taking a lead in educational policy.

Lesley Crawley added: “We are delighted and blessed to have both Wendy and Craig with us and look forward to their continuing ministry as the parish grows and seeks to express the love of God in our community”.

Vocation

Introducing our LLM-in-training

07/06/2017 Lesley Crawley Leave a comment

Hello from Wendy Edwards

A very big thank you, to all of you at St. John’s, for your warm welcome to me since I started worshipping with you on February 19^th, 2017. I look forward to worshipping at St. George’s and St. Mark’s over the summer and to gradually meeting you all.

I am approaching my final year of 4 years of training to be a Licensed Lay Minister and hope to be licensed in June 2018, God willing. I feel excited and grateful to Lesley and Alan that I am now joining the Ministry Team in the Parish of Badshot Lea and Hale.

I was born in Lincolnshire but we moved to Upper Weybourne Lane with my family in 1962 when I was 5 and we moved to Roman Way when I was 9. I attended primary and secondary schools in Farnham. I left home to live in Wimbledon when I was 18, worked in the law and taught Keep Fit classes and returned to Farnham recently, after 41 years away, to live in Oast House Crescent with my husband, Steve. We have 2 grown up children and a young grandson. We are very grateful to live in such a beautiful, peaceful location.

Sadly, my mum, Jean Parratt, died on my 59^th birthday last October. She was known to many of you for her Museum on a Shoestring talks, her work on the Farnham Diary and at Farnham Museum and her 10 books about Farnham.

Through my grief, I have found it heart-warming to benefit from the high regard in which she was held by so many Farnham people. The unique legacy she has left the people of Farnham has buoyed us up immensely and it has helped me to feel seamlessly included in the Farnham community which she loved so much.

I was a bridesmaid twice at St. John’s for my late Uncle Francis when he married Auntie Sally in April 1966 and for my Auntie Margaret and Uncle Geoff. Here is a photo of me at their wedding (I am the dark haired 11-year-old bridesmaid) with my late sister, Debbie (the younger, blonde, bridesmaid) on 25^th January 1969. I look a bit different now and don’t wear turquoise velvet much nowadays! I do look forward to chatting to you over coffee after a service in the coming months.