St Peter’s Bethnal Green, St Peter’s Close, London E2 7AE

[email protected] 020 7033 0244 www.stpetersbethnalgreen.org

St Peter with St Thomas Bethnal Green

ANNUAL REPORT 2014 (January – December 2014)

Part 1 Sections 1-6: The Vicar’s Report

1. Reference information

Members of the PCC are elected as Trustees at the Annual Parochial Church Meeting (APCM) in accordance with the Church Representation Rules. During the year the following served as members of the PCC:

Vicar: The Rev’d Adam Atkinson, Chairman Assisting Priest: Canon Dr Angus Ritchie Wardens: Elizabeth Ker, Andy Walton Representative on the Deanery Synod: Andy Walton (Triennium to 2017) Elected Members: Rebecca Adlington (Safeguarding Officer), David Butler (Treasurer), Helen Crane, Hannah Fleetwood, Pam Haluwa, Tim Ker (Chair, Finance Working Group), Joy Middleton, Maria Wyard. Co-opted Secretary: Katie Purser St Peter’s Bethnal Green is a registered charity number 1154668. St Peter’s Bethnal Green uses the banking services of Reliance Bank Ltd at Faith House, 23-24 Lovat Lane, London, EC3R 8EB. Mazars (Times House, Throwley Way, Sutton, Surrey, SM1 4JQ) were appointed to carry out the independent examination of accounts for 2014. Postal address of the church: St Peter’s Bethnal Green, St Peter’s Close, London E2 7AE. Administrative address: The Mission Hall office, 56 Warner Place, London E2 7DA.

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2. Structure & Governance

Responsibilities of the PCC

The PCC of St Peter’s Bethnal Green, has the responsibility, together with the Vicar, the Rev’d Adam Atkinson, to promote in the parish the whole mission of the Church. This includes the pastoral, evangelistic, social and ecumenical aspects. It is responsible for the maintenance of the buildings of St Peter’s Bethnal Green. As a Church of England Parish church, the PCC and Vicar follow requirements of Church of England Canon Law.

Objectives and activities

The objectives of St Peter’s Bethnal Green are to promote in the parish the whole mission of the Church with a focus to worship God, make friends and change the world.

The PCC organises itself to carry out its aims and objectives by having regular meetings and various sub-committees. The PCC held seven formal meetings over the year.

The Finance Working Group of the PCC was formed to carry out action, preparing Governance decisions for the PCC and taking forward management matters with the Vicar. Day-to-day management of the church is delegated to the Vicar, Rev’d Adam Atkinson and his staff team. An ‘Executive’ operated as Standing Committee made up of the Vicar, church Wardens and Assisting Priest.

The 2014 electoral roll had 99 registered members at the APCM. Those on the Electoral roll are able to nominate candidates for the PCC. The PCC and Church Wardens are elected annually at the APCM. PCC members are introduced to the workings of the PCC at the beginning of the year by the Vicar who provides a briefing and verbal comments.

Public Benefit

The PCC members confirm that they have complied with the duty in section 17 of the Charities Act 2011 to have regard to the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit. St Peters’ Bethnal Green works alongside a number of organisations as partners in undertaking mercy, justice and evangelism. We support these practically, financially and/or in encouraging people to volunteer and we receive support from them in fulfilling our calling as a local church.

These include: Tower Hamlets and Hackney Foodbanks, The Mission Practice, Tower Hamlets Citizens, Citizens UK, The Centre for Theology and Community, Mission Housing, Resurgo, Church Resource Ministries, Arch 76, St Paul’s Shadwell, St Andrew by the Wardrobe and other local churches, individual ministries and social enterprises.

The church of St Peter’s Bethnal Green benefits the community by the activities described in the section below entitled ‘Change the World’, notably through outreach and supporting others through our volunteer programme, prayer and financial input.

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3. ‘Worship God’

Church attendance

Average Sunday attendance in 2014 at St Peter’s Bethnal Green (2013 figures in brackets):

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 (Jan-March) (April-June) (July–Sept) (Oct-Dec) 10am sung Eucharist communicants 41 (35) 39 (35) 38 (39) 43 (45)

adults 45 (36) 44 (40) 46 (38) 53 (46)

children 4 (1) 2 (3) 5 (3) 6 (5)

11am service of the Word adults 47 (46) 44 (50) 47 (47) 45 (50)

children 9 (12) 12 (12) 12 (10) 10 (9)

10am monthly Family service communicants 65 (68) 69 (58) 60 (50) 58 (56)

adults 67 (67) 75 (58) 63 (54) 74 (60)

children 11 (20) 13 (12) 14 (7) 11 (9)

6pm monthly evening service adults 16 17 20 (17) 31 (11)

Regular services

Throughout 2014, St Peter’s Bethnal Green continued to hold a liturgical Sung Eucharist service at 10am and an informal Service of the Word at 11am, the two congregations combined on the 1st Sunday of the month by one 10am cross-tradition Family Service with Communion, followed by a community lunch.

On Sundays in August one 10am cross-tradition service was held. A monthly 6pm service, usually with Eucharist, also continued and was launched as a new weekly service at the end of the year. Morning Prayer was held in the Chancel at 8.30am Tuesday to Friday. The 7.30pm Thursday evening Communion Service continued, celebrating a number of festivals and key festivals in the church calendar were celebrated.

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Guest preachers at St Peter’s Bethnal Green included Rt Hon & Rt Rev The Lord Bishop of London, Rt Rev Adrian Newman The Bishop of Stepney, Brother Yun, Sr Josephine Canny, Fr Sean Connolly, The clergy and a number of lay members of St Peter’s Bethnal Green have led and preached at services. We follow the Church of England lectionary and the rubric of Common Worship.

Occasional services

There were 4 baptisms and 2 weddings officiated at St Peter’s Bethnal Green in 2014. The Vicar undertook 4 additional funerals at cemeteries for members of the parish and friends as well as presiding and preaching engagements. Other services included:

• Holy Week including 7.30am Morning Prayer & 7.30pm Evening Prayer, a Maundy Thursday meal (34) ‘watch & pray’ until midnight (22), a series of Good Friday reflections (25) and liturgy (33); • A Deanery Synod event on 22 May (57); • An evening on the persecuted church with Brother Yun (15, 195) • A celebration of social transformation and the launch of the Lonodn Misisonal Housing Bond with the Bishops of London and Stepney; • A Harvest Festival Evening Prayer on 19 October; • An act of Remembrance on Remembrance Sunday; • Two ‘Access’ youth events; • The ‘Carols by Candlelight’ service on 14 December with the Bishop of Stepney (215); • ‘Jesus on the Green’, a service of carols on Jesus Green on 21 December.

Worship Music

St Peter’s continued our relationship with Worship Central, James McSporran who had contributed massively to our music left to return to Ps&Gs church in Edinburgh where he is dong student work. In his place we welcomed James Pascoe, a talented musician from Guernsey. Bob and Adam have held discussions with Worship Central and with other East End churches in order to coordinate training and accommodation.

Tom Daggett, our organist for the last 3 years and leader of the classical and choral music left to take up a full time choirmaster post in combination with a role on the music staff of St Paul’s Cathedral. God has graciously given us Isabel Bradby, who moved to St Peter's Estate in the Summer and who is an organist keen to play more. In addition Stephen Atkinson, also a talented musician, has led some of our 10am worship.

A development which is given pleasure to many has been a small choir under leadership of Graham Pritchard. They have contributed increasingly to the 10am worship.

Children’s church

The children continue to be in the centre of the worship space for the beginning of the 11am service and engaged with all-age, interactive talks in the All-In Family Services. Our children's worship has developed and towards the end of the year they were regularly action songs being joined in with by all the congregation at 11am!

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Under the leadership of Vienna Francis-Mullins, 'Godly Play' was started for the children coming to the 10am service. Vienna, Angus and Adam have all lead these sessions in Room 2. It can be used when the number and ages of children demand a need for it.

Room 1 where the main children's work takes place during the 11am service was significantly upgraded in order to accommodate Spear as their main mid week space. This has meant that storage was improved and the use of the room is now exclusively either Spear mid week or children on Sunday.

A growing feature of the children’s work at St Peter’s is the number of new babies. A group and facilities to accommodate these children as they develop is anticipated. They have each brought much joy and encouragement to the church.

The leadership of the children's work was taken on by the team of volunteers, with special thanks to Kathy Richards and Becca Adlington. Team meetings were held to plan the curriculum and other elements of strategy. It remains our ambition to employ a children’s worker a this is this the potential to be a major area of growth for the church.

Prayer

Prayer is foundational to all the work we do. Any visible action and growth is built on the unseen life of prayer. Morning Prayer in the Chancel at 8.30 became established. The Thursday 7.30pm Communion is an additional weekly space for contemplative prayer. The Maundy Thursday ‘Watch and Pray’ until midnight was again held in church.

Morning prayer was held at 7:30am along with evening prayer at 7:30pm during both lent and Advent. The monthly prayer meetingwas put on hold, to be replaced by prayer in Life Groups and organised centrally around events in the church calendar.

St Peter's at 6

St Peter's at 6 was launched at the Carol Service. It is aimed at providing more space for more people to worship God together. It is being launched with a pioneering group. Youth meet at 5pm followed by a smoothie bar prior to and a pub trip for the older members after. There is a contemporary feel with Communion celebrated every week.

4. ‘Make Friends’

Life Groups

Life Groups are the midweek meetings at the heart of the church at St Peter’s Bethnal Green. Life Groups have been growing and leaders’ meetings were held for training and mutual support.

In 2014 Life Groups were ‘Chambord Street’, led by Danny & Helen Crane, which became ‘Cardigan Street’ when leadership was passed over to Rob & Helen Quail and Magaly Rojas, ‘Fairfield Road/Teesdale Street’ led by Tim & Elizabeth Ker, ‘Clarkson Street’, led by Hannah & David Barclay and Andy Walton, ‘The Basement’, led by David Butler and Bob Barstow, ‘Daylight’, led by Pam Haluwa and Joy Middleton.

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Youth work

Our Youth Work Student from St Mellitus, Beth Tidd started the second of her three years at St Peter’s and led the work with young people with 121, or 221, individual discipleship, small group settings on Tuesday evening and during Sunday services and also among a larger group of young people with Access Tower Hamlets, which is a youth gathering, now beyond Tower Hamlets alone, pioneered through St Peter's. With the launch of St Peter's at 6 our youth group has moved to 5pm on Sunday nights and has brought together youth from across our three gatherings.

We were able to support some younger youth to go on Longbarn, the SU camp now run by a member of St Peter’s, David Butler. We took two tents of young people to Focus.

Focus 2014

40 people from St Peter’s, including 20 children and young people, joined other HTB church plants and friends for a week’s Christian teaching holiday at Camber Sands in July. Focus offers a variety of different activities, a wonderful children’s ministry, incredible worship and some provocative talks and seminars. External funding supported some on bursaries. St Peter's hosted an increasingly popular 8am Daily Holy Communion, with the Archbishop of Canterbury one of the regular communicants.

Discovering God

The Easter baptisms followed our last Alpha. 'Discovery Bible Studies’ 121 and in groups have continued to be experimented with and staff have held regular meetings with a variety o people for missional purposes. CRM followed up with training a number of young leaders through ‘Mission 365’, the new version of Mission Year. A ‘Following and Fishing’ training with Steve & Michelle Addison was held in the Autumn.

Every opportunity has been taken to make friendships with the x couples who had their banns read at St Peter's. Marriage Preparation was offered by Adam and Heather and we referred couples to the course at HTB.

Relationship building

The pop-up garden café was held on a number of Sunday afternoons creating not just a buzz of goodwill but also a profit of approx £100 per week. ‘The Big Lunch’ was held in the church garden in partnership with THCH. We participated in ‘Open Garden Squares’ in collaboration with Zander Court Garden Club and Oaklands School on 15th June. A ‘Back to School BBQ' and bouncy castle party was in September. For a Petertide party on 29th June ‘Classic Bethnal Green’ included the first Bethnal Green Morris Minor rally!

The annual visit to Stapleford and villages in Hertfordshire took place in July. We are very grateful for the generosity and welcome of people there. Two further coach trip outings were held over the summer. The first 'Church Day Out’ was on Saturday 11th October at St Andrew by the Wardrobe. The Annual Harvest Supper in the Mission Hall on Harvest Sunday 19th October. Women’s breakfasts were held around the parish.

All the courses, activities, events and mission outlined above could not take place without the much appreciated help of congregation volunteers as well as staff.

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5. ‘Change the world’

Employment

Last September we launched the first Spear Centre in East London, which runs a pre- employment course for young people aged 16 – 25 who are out of work, education or training. By the end of the year the first two 6-week courses had been completed (As at April 2015 there had been 49 graduates, 21 of whom are already in work).

Commmunity Organising

We are an active member institution of Tower Hamlets Citizens, the local Chapter of Citizens UK. We have been doing ‘micro-organising’ in a campaign called ‘Cross The Road’ along with Avebury East and other local residents to encourage the council to improve our street environment. The Mayor and senior officers visited. The St Peter’s Close road surface was renewed and we pressed for a zebra crossing over Warner Place.

Health

Wilma Bol has been working as a full time ‘Networker for Wellbeing’ with the Mission Practice, linking patients with community-based projects to meet a range of needs. Her work has been really successful with a 29% reduction in GP attendance from patients who have met with her. The Mission Practice would like St Peter’s to be their local church, for example through praying/listening with patients.

Food

We continue to partner with Foodbank by making regular collections on their behalf and are able to hand out food vouchers to those most in need in the local community as well as Christmas parcels. We held a monthly ‘community meal’, a ‘bring & share and take away’ event intended to be open to all.

Shoreditch Group

We hosted The Shoreditch Group, funded via a specific grant given through St Peter’s by The Bishop of London’s Mission Fund. Adam and Helen Moules have run this as a relational network of church leaders collaborating to scale up social transformation projects. As the 3 year project came to an end it was written up in a report by CTC.

Partnership

An emerging partnership with St Andrew by the Wardrobe was developed which, it is hoped, will grow to become established as an active collaboration, primarily on social transformation, and which will be of mutual benefit to our strategic goals

Outreach

We ran pop-up Carols on Columbia Road on 4 Wednesday evenings before Christmas following an invitation from the shopkeepers. 200 people per session were involved.

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Pub blessings were held at two in the parish on 30th November (by invitation and arrangement): The Birdcage, under new management, and The Marksman before Gary and his family, the owner and friend of St Peter’s, left.

St Peters was successful in bidding for the first 'missional house' under the newly launched London Missional Housing Bond. A 2 bedroom flat in the parish was bought by Mission Housing, the administrators of the assets of the Bond. After considerable discussion with the steering group Steve and Michelle Addison moved in August from Australia to undertake mission both in the parish specifically and also to enable training in London and across the UK.

Members of staff are encouraged to be involved in the management and governance of other Christian ministries, especially those with whom we partner and which work locally and impact the disadvantaged and which work in mission. In 2014 these included The Cinnamon Network, Hackney Foodbank, The Centre for Theology and Community, Citizens UK, Access, Mission 365, The Mission Practice, Arch 76, Ella’s Home, SPEAR

Money

Collections were taken for SPEAR, The British Legion, the Bishop of Stepney’s Discretionary Fund, Foodbank and GoMAD in Tanzania.

6. Management & Admin

Church Staff

James Pascoe joined as a Worship Central Academy placement student. Hannah Caddick joined Spear Bethnal Green as Centre Manager, Katie Akhurst as Lead Coach and Josh Jeffries as Intern. Helen Connacher (later Barstow) started a new role employed through Henry Fawcett Fund as Social Transformation Coordinator at St Peter’s Bethnal Green.

Angus Ritchie continued as Assisting Priest in conjunction with his full time role as Director of CTC. Beth Tidd continued as a Youth Work degree student placed at St Peter’s and took on more responsibility for youth at St Peter’s. Heather Atkinson started her 3rd year as an Ordinand on placement at St Peter’s. Helen Moules changed roles from Project Manager of the Shoreditch Group to be full time Operations Manager at St Peter’s. Bob Barstow changed roles from the Youth, Children and Worship Manager to be Outreach Pastor and took on more management responsibility. Wilma Bol moved from being Sunday Services Administrator to take up a full time role through St Peters as Networker for Wellbeing at The Mission Practice. Staff meetings were held weekly at church on Tuesday mornings with occasional visits to St Paul’s Shadwell to participate in a staff teams ‘Learning Community’.

We hosted two ‘Jellicoe’ interns in July, Stephen Atkinson and Nathaniel Darling. An intern from a church in Norway, Toralf Tokheim, was attached to St Peter’s for a month for church planting training. Two Ordinands in training at theological college undertook placements with St Peter’s: Tim Wall, a 2nd year from Cranmer Hall, for a week, and Vienna Francis-Mullins, a 3rd year from Westcott House, for a term.

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James McSporran left in July to return to Scotland after his year as our Worship Academy student. Joe Garrett left to move to Didcot at the conclusion of his intern year. Caitlin Burbridge moved from being a church-based organiser employed through CTC to being the community organiser of Hackney. Rob Quail’s contract as Development Manager had been extended to cover some part time hours which ended in February.

Media

The Church Urban Fund published a report about urban community impact containing a case study of St Peter’s. Theos, the public theology think tank, had interviewed a range of St Peter’s people and community leaders about the growth and impact of St Peter’s.

Design and social media campaigns were created and run in-house with excellent professional support from Nick Cant and Jon Baldwin as volunteers. Term cards were produced quarterly. The weekly St Peter’s ‘News from the Pews’ was continued. The website remained content-managed in house. Our Twitter account gathered 203 followers. Email communication is also in house using Mailchimp. There were 125 (82) ‘core team’, 62 (66) ‘visitors’ and 55 (31) ‘former members' on the email database.

Mission Hall

Church Resource Ministries (CRM) continued to rent an office, with the hall acting as an occasional training venue. Alas de Salvacion, a Spanish-speaking church and Eleos Church continue their longstanding use on Sunday. Fellowship Church held a monthly prayer and worship night. Shaddaiville maintained bi-monthly meetings.

St Peter’s Church Office welcomed Bethnal Green Spear Trust in August. In addition to Room 1 designated as the classroom use, Spear used the hall for sessions including Graduations. The hall was used weekly by Bethnal Green First Class Learning and Civitas Schools Programme. Kerris Bunting of Blue Dove Wedding Company used hot-desking and storage, enabling her vintage wedding planning business start up.

The Hall attracted interest as a venue for neighbourhood meetings by tenant groups and associations, and charities and community groups sharing an ethos of local activism and community engagement. Jubilee Debt Campaign’s annual event ‘The Spark’, made full use of the Mission Hall and Church for a 6-day event.

Development

Our application to Heritage Lottery Fund for major grant funding for the redevelopment of the church building was awarded. This was regarded as a very significant step in the life of St Peter’s. At the end of the year a Project Manager, Colin Glen of GPI was appointed and also recruited Rob Quail to join the company. The project is in the development phase until the end of 2015, by which time we need to have match-funded almost £2m. Once the funding has been secured only then will the HLF grant be unlocked and enable the development. Much dialogue was held with the PCC and with the HLF about the nature of the award and the consequences of accepting it.

Vicar’s Report – The Rev’d Adam Atkinson

www.stpetersbethnalgreen.org

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