The Parish Church of St Mary's Hanley Castle with St Gabriel's Hanley Swan
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THE PARISH CHURCH OF ST MARY’S HANLEY CASTLE WITH ST GABRIEL’S HANLEY SWAN Annual Parochial Church Meeting Sunday 21st March 2021 Chair: The Revd Barry Unwin Report for the Parochial Church Council, of St Mary’s Church, Hanley Castle with St Gabriel’s Hanley Swan Calendar Year 2020 Aims and Purposes Our Parochial Church Council (PCC) has the responsibility of cooperating with the incumbent, the Reverend Barry Unwin, in promoting in the ecclesiastical parish, the whole mission of the Church, pastoral, evangelistic, social and ecumenical. The PCC is also specifically responsible for the maintenance of the churches of St Mary, Hanley Castle and St Gabriel’s Hanley Swan. Objectives and Activities The PCC is committed to enabling as many people as possible to worship at our church and to become part of our parish community. The PCC maintains an overview of worship throughout the parish and makes suggestions on how our services can involve people living within our parish. Our services and worship put faith into practice through prayer and scripture, music and sacrament. When planning our activities for the year, we have considered the Charity Commission’s guidance on public benefit and, in particular, the supplementary guidance on charities for the advancement of religion. In particular, we try to enable ordinary people to live out their faith as part of our parish community through: • Worship and prayer; learning about the Gospel; and developing their knowledge and trust in Jesus. • Provision of pastoral care for people living in the parish. • Missionary and outreach work. To facilitate this work it is important that we maintain the fabric of our church buildings. Achievements and Performance None of us could have anticipated just how unusual 2020 would turn out to be. Due to the Covid-lockdown, for several months, the Church of England ceased to exist, at least as defined in official statistics like the usual Sunday attendance! Praise God then that his church is so much more than buildings, and official statistics! For starters, lockdown forced us to innovate – moving online to offer a mix of regular pre-recorded Sunday and midweek services available on DVD and YouTube (streamed through our website, www.hopechurchfamily.org/virtual), and live services streamed on Zoom. Initially viewing figures were very high but have tailed off as “in-person” services restarted in some of our churches. However even during the “relaxed” period between lockdowns 1 and 2, when 4-5 services were taking place in person each week across the benefices, the online services were regularly being viewed by 50-60 people. I am grateful to everyone who made it possible to produce these services, most especially Sue Adeney, Jane Fraser and Alison Martin who innovated different styles of service at key pastoral moments. Alongside this, several pastoral measures came into being as they were needed in the first two lockdowns (lockdown 3 is not included in this report, as it happened in 2021!) These included: • Regular pastoral phone calls from the wardens, clergy, and service-leadership teams • A support mechanism for vulnerable people in the community, set up by Sue Adeney, to help with shopping and prescriptions. • The reopening of both St Gabriel’s and St Mary’s for private prayer. • Distribution of a prayer booklet for people without access to the internet. • Regular Zoom-based youth group activities for our Deep- End youth group. Considering some have dismissed the Church of England’s national response to the pandemic as pathetic, an awful lot of people locally seem to have expended an enormous amount of energy making a real difference in 2020. Whilst those who have regularly appeared on our computer and television screens are easier to identify, it is important also to pay tribute to the small legion of Covid-cleaners, who have worked so hard and carefully to allow us to open our buildings to the public on a limited basis. In addition, the work of our church wardens, who now carry the H&S responsibility of being “Covid Venue Managers” on behalf of the PCC, needs to be emphasised. Their can-do attitude has made what would otherwise have been a very tough year, something to celebrate. For further details of all that took place, do see the Church Wardens reports. Inevitably with the strictness of the lockdown during 2020-21, our involvement in our local schools has been diminished. “Whole-school” assemblies at Hanley Swan school stopped in March 2020 and did not resume during 2020. As a result, the school’s traditional visits to St Gabriel’s at Easter and Harvest and Christmas did not happen. However, we adapted our work with the school, providing fortnightly assemblies through YouTube, regular Open the Book videos (who would have thought 2020 would have seen us producing Peg-Men videos to tell bible stories!) and occasional live classroom visits through Microsoft Teams. Work with Hanley Castle School was similarly restricted, though we were still able to participate in the Christmas Carol Service, which was again an online-only service. We hope that the wonderful news about the vaccine that was developed around the end of 2020 will see 2021 become more normal by the end of the year! Church officers & Ministry Sue Adeney completed the second year of her curacy in mid- 2020. She is licensed to both benefices but the two churches in the Hanleys continue to be the main focus of her work. I’m grateful for all the work Sue has done this year, her enthusiasm and drive have been enormously helpful to our mission. Helen Owens and Carol Hutchings were re-elected as Church Warden in Hanley Castle and Hanley Swan respectively (though both are legally warden for both churches). I am enormously grateful to them for their hard work, advice and support throughout the year. I’m grateful to Sue Roberts for her work as treasurer, and to all of the other PCC members for their diligence and responsibility. I continue to be grateful to our clergy, Linda Bedford, Sue Adeney, Bill Rumball and David Martin for leading our services in the Hanleys. We reviewed who does what at the end of lockdown one, and a revised pattern of services was introduced across the whole of our benefices, designed to give each of our distinct congregations at least two services every month. Administrator In July 2020, our benefice administrator, Clare Bell moved on, and despite lockdown we were able to recruit a replacement, Alison Davis, who started work in October. The costs of employment are shared between the parishes in our benefices, except for Welland. Alison is based in the benefice office, in Upton Parish Church. She works 9am to 12:30pm on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and is available for a range of parish support duties including copying and document preparation as well as assisting with some Safeguarding, funeral, wedding, and baptism administration. Alison is now drawing to the end of her 6-month probationary period and we are very encouraged by her work and contribution. Worship and Prayer The PCC is keen to offer a range of services through the month and over the course of the year. Our pattern of regular services has changed in 2020 because of lockdown. St Mary’s, Hanley Castle First Sunday of the Month Evensong 6:30pm Second Sunday of the Month Holy Communion 9:30am Third Sunday of the month No service Fourth Sunday Family Service including Communion of the month 9:30am Fifth Sunday of Benefice Service – for location see the Month www.hopechurchfamily.org/calendar St Gabriel’s, Hanley Swan First Sunday of Holy Communion 9:30am joint with St the Month James, Welland Second Sunday No service (Morning Worship, at St of the Month James, Welland, 11am) Third Sunday of the month Holy Communion 9:30am Fourth Sunday of the month No service Fifth Sunday of Benefice Service – varying venues the Month All are welcome to attend our regular services. Regular attendance varies throughout the year but, numbers do increase substantially at festivals and for carol services, however in 2020, due to Covid capacity restrictions in our buildings, attendances were significantly down. As well as our regular services, we enable our community to celebrate and thank God at the milestones of the journey through life. Through baptism we thank God for the gift of life, in marriage public vows are exchanged with God’s blessing and through funeral services friends and family express their grief and give thanks for the life which is now complete in this world and to commend the person into God's keeping. The lockdown prevented most baptisms and weddings from occurring in 2020 and placed very strict limits on funerals causing some families to choose the crematorium over a church funeral because of the facility to stream the service on the internet from there. The year in numbers: St Mary’s, Hanley Castle 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 Sundays on 25 48 48 46 46 47 which services held Usual N/A 16 13 14 17 17 Sunday Attendance Baptism 0 2 5 1 3 2 Weddings 1 3 2 2 2 2 Funerals 2 2 2 2 2 3 Electoral 66 65 64 (joint 58 60 65 Roll (joint with with Hanley Hanley Swan) Swan) St Gabriel’s, Hanley Swan 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 Sundays on 18 42 42 32 52 52 which services held Usual 27 21 21 21 Sunday Attendance Baptism 0 5 2 3 2 2 Weddings 1 2 2 2 4 2 Funerals 5 1 9 10 (2) 3 5 Electoral 66 65 64 (joint 58 60 65 Roll (joint (joint with with with Hanley Hanley Hanley Castle) Castle) Castle) Source; Annual Statistics for Mission CofE, submitted by our Church Wardens.