St Andrew’s - Your Church

Annual Report 2008

A collection of reports and news from around the Parish highlighting some of the activities, events and achievements of the last year. For a full picture of all that is going on at St Andrew’s visit our website which is packed with news and pictures about what we have been doing.

Parish & People Committee

he Parish & People Committee met on three occasions during the year, in June, October and January. The Committee reviewed services during the year and made recommendations for future occasions. The following issues were of particular interest:

o Evening Worship – the Youth Service continues to attract approximately 60 people; the congregation for the newly devised Evensong (with music) has increased; the 1^st Sunday Parish Communion is generally poorly attended.

o 8 people from St Andrew’s camped for an exciting and fun week at New Wine 2007 (there were also 2 day visitors); at least 15 people are planning to go in 2008.

o The 2007 Palm Sunday service was held at the RKS (it was a first Sunday) and was very well attended. There was a Passover Seder on Maundy Thursday, led by Yehuda and Polly Zabari, which was well received.

o The very large congregation for the Crib Service (in the region of 400) is a serious concern, both from the point of view of comfort and of safety. The Christmas Gift service yielded over 100 gifts, which were donated to Leatherhead Trinity School family centre, which works with families that are facing particular difficulties. A response to the theft of money destined for Crisis Open Christmas was to hold a second, and uplifting, Carol Service.

o In Holy Week 2008, there will be short reflective services on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7pm (suitable for any age); an agape supper on Maundy Thursday; a 10am Family Service and three hour devotion on Good Friday, led by the vicar.

o A major pilot project is planned for 10 weeks in May – June 2008 to run two parallel main services on Sunday mornings – at 9am (Parish Communion) and 10.30am (a service of the Word). After this trial period, its success and difficulties will be assessed.

Valerie Pitt

Stewardship

t was agreed at the spring finance and standing committee that there would not be a hard stewardship drive by the committee in the autumn of 2007. There were sermons on stewardship during October and November, including one given by Paul Otter at the Royal Kent service. This was the first time this had been done, and it was well received.

There was a stewardship display at the Christ the King service officiated by Bishop Ian at the end of November. The display showed how our income is spent in Outreach projects here in Oxshott and abroad. The Mothers’ Union arranged wonderful drinks and nibbles.

At the spring PCC the environment was added to the responsibilities of the stewardship team. Ross Fitzgerald was a newly elected member of the PCC at the time. He works in this field and is keen to develop St Andrew’s policy and commitment to environmental issues, in line with those of the Church of England, and best practice. Ross is currently producing an action plan for this stream of Vision2012, to be presented to the PCC in February.

Marjorie Cox continues to be the Parish Funding Administrator, recording all income and claiming Gift Aid. She is writing to all our regular planned givers asking them to consider increasing their standing orders to compensate for the reduction in Gift Aid, as a result of the reduction in income tax from April 2008. This letter will go out in March. If regular givers do not increase their standing orders, then our income (from Gift Aid) will decrease by about £4000 per annum.

This year we intend to do a ‘time and talents’ drive to bring out some people’s skills, and to reduce the Parish workload of others.

Rebecca Mayhew

Chairman - Stewardship Committee

Sidesmen and Cashiers

nce again I would like to thank my team of sidesmen for the hard work and support throughout the year. Services have been covered with dedication.

Early morning 8 am services are looked after by Mr and Mrs Mick and Janice Aslin; Mr and Mrs Neil and Sue Cobb; Mr David Allan; Mr and Mrs Bryon and Jackie Lawrence; Mr and Mrs Christopher and Pat Pringle. Other services are looked after by Mrs Marianne Burt, Messrs Brian Cox, Len Avery, Simon Moffat, Perry Stock, mike Newman, John Stephens, Mrs Gloria Smith and myself.

Weekly collections are checked and banked by our team of cashiers, Brenda Hum, Jackie Stewart, Derek Hilborne, Henk Van Roest, Bryon Lawrence, Christopher Pringle, Leon Reed and Len Avery.

Neil Cobb has given long and faithful service to St Andrew’s but has now had to relinquish his sidesman duties. We thank both him and Sue for all their work over the years. We are pleased that we have been able to welcome back Bryon Lawrence who was also away for a while due to ill health.

Befrienders

I would like to thank all of you who provide a friendly welcome to the congregations at the 10 am service.

Gwen Bullen

Flower Arrangers

big thank you to all the flower arranging team for doing such a wonderful job in decorating the Church at all times, but especially at festivals. New helpers are always welcome.

Jill Levitton

Outreach Committee

he Committee was responsible during 2007 for distributing close to £35K to several Charitable Christian organizations both close to home and overseas as well as investing in evangelistic activities in support of our Vision to spread the Gospel here in Oxshott. This amounts to 15% of our annual income for 2007.

We received many warm and enthusiastic and appreciative letters from the current organizations we supported and hope to build on those relationships this year. We have tried to heighten the awareness of our own congregation to many of these causes this year and hope that this more holistic approach will add to our overall awareness of Mission in the Church.

To highlight just a few of our gifts seems a little incongruous, however the visit of 6 teenage girls from Bosnia as part of our Novi Most link, with Paul taking a group of our own young people to Bosnia this summer is special. In addition to the provision of funding for another key borehole in Owerri, sponsorship and support of Doctor Ernest Nwaigbo at Leeds University, where he is studying Public Health and Administration to help him to develop as the Diocesan Doctor. We are now praying his wife’s visa will be granted so she can join him just after Easter.

The books we distributed at Christmas to the young people were very well received by children and parents alike. The investment we made in the Nativity also seems to have been a success with many positive comments from both members of the Church and villagers alike. Based initially in the High Street for the opening of the Christmas festivities, but then brought back to the Church for the Christmas services, seems also to have been the right balance and enabled us to take the true meaning of Christmas into the heart of the village. None of these initiatives are possible without your extraordinary generosity towards those much less fortunate than ourselves and the desire to spread the Gospel of Christ to our community here in Oxshott.

Ron Stewart, Chairman – Outreach Committee

Leatherhead Deanery Synod

uildford Diocese comprises of 12 Deaneries with two Archdeaconries (Dorking and Surrey). St Andrew’s is one of the 13 parishes that make up the Leatherhead Deanery part of the Dorking Archdeaconry.

The Deanery Synod representatives were: Claire King, Robert Stansbury & Caroline Green. Revd Jeremy Cresswell was Rural Dean.

During the year there have been five meetings and services of the Leatherhead Deanery, one combined meeting of the Emly and Leatherhead Deaneries and one combined meeting of the Dorking and Leatherhead Deaneries.

The various speakers at these meetings have included The Rt. Revd. Christopher Hill, Bishop of Guildford who spoke about the dangers of climate change and the affect on poverty, erosion, starvation and water stress; Dr. Colin Connolly whose talk was entitled “Choosing the Future (Human Genetics)”; and Rt. Revd. Michael Baughen, Assistant Bishop in Guildford who gave a stimulating talk about the gift of Mission and Evangelism. Most recently Mrs Jane Williams, wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, gave a fascinating talk on the programme planned for the spouses of bishops attending the Lambeth Conference this summer, describing, in particular the lives and work of Bishops' wives she had met from all over the Anglican Communion.

Oxshott Parish Magazine

he Parish Magazine flourished again in 2007, as we continue our aim of being a magazine from St. Andrew’s that engages with the whole village. The appearance of the Magazine was again refreshed, we carried a wider range of articles, and circulation remained high.

On the financial front, total costs for the year rose to £12,513 (£11,081), but income increased to £12,287 (£11,562), with a small net loss this year of £226. We continue to aim to cover our costs year by year, no mean feat for a parish magazine, especially given that 2,200 copies of our special December edition was again delivered free to every home in the parish.

Many thanks are due to a small army of contributors, editors and distributors, especially to Lily Nicholson for managing the advertising and Christina van Roest for her dedicated work on the editorial side. During the year we welcomed Margaret Pick on board, who has taken on overseeing the distribution, and plans are afoot to increase the number of subscribers during the coming year.

The continued support of everyone is much appreciated.

Brian Cox, Managing Editor

Coffee Corner

offee Corner has continued to thrive during 2007-8 and over the past 2 years has become embedded in the life of St Andrew's, playing an important part in bringing church groups together and reaching out to the wider community in Oxshott.

We now regularly serve coffee, tea or other hot drinks to between 5 and 25 people every day: that is in addition to providing a warm welcome to everyone who visits St Andrew's during the week, whether on church business, to bring their child to playgroup, or simply to find company. There is a regular team of up to 44 volunteers who take it in turns to man the kettle and the coffee machine from 8.30 until 10.30 or from 10.30 until 12.30 each week day, which means that we are close to our goal of only having to ask our volunteers to do one session per month.

As a bonus, the generosity of visitors to Coffee Corner has allowed us to contribute over £750 to the various outreach charities that St Andrew's supports.

St Andrews Women’s Breakfasts

nother popular year for the St Andrews Women’s Breakfasts. Two breakfasts were held this year with speakers talking on varied subjects from working to rescue prostitutes and drug addicts in the red light district of Amsterdam to ‘Gold hotpants or black bin liners –whatever works for you!’

We also alternated venues with over 75 attending Fi Ivin’s fun and thought provoking talk on image at the Woodlands Park Hotel in Cobham in May and some 55 squeezing into a brand new venue, the Cedar House Hotel in Cobham, in October to hear Rachel Jordan describe her rescue work in Amsterdam.

The women’s breakfasts form part of St Andrew’s outreach to the community with the aim being to invite women who would perhaps consider their working lives to be quite separate from the church (or who are not involved with the church at all). Encouragingly for both breakfasts, many new women attended some from other churches and some new to the area or church.

As well as listening to entertaining and thought provoking speakers we all enjoyed delicious breakfasts in great company.

St Andrew’s Men’s Breakfasts

hree breakfasts were held for men at the Star Inn during 2007 and each was reported in the following month’s magazine. 165 attended in total. We heard from Andy Kind, a young Christian comedian who is making a name for himself in comedy clubs and Tom Henner, who played baseball for the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets, and who told us about a relationship with the Father in Heaven that is really the whole new ball game.

Baptism

t is a St. Andrew’s tradition that each child to be Baptised is assigned a parish godparent. This is arranged after an interview with Jeremy and Valerie and is usually done geographically and is someone who attends St. Andrew’s regularly.

This year, we have had 16 baptisms. Most of these have taken place during the 10 am Sunday service. We try to encourage the families to attend Toddler Praise and TWIG. At present, a high proportion of the attendees of Toddler Praise are Baptism families. Also we encourage them to join Junior Church and endeavour to keep the families informed of various child-friendly services i.e. Community and Third Sunday services or special days like Mothering Sunday, Father's Day fun day and the church picnic. Plus the Mums are kept up-to-date with Twig events and the Women’s and Men’s Breakfast.

In June 2007 we held our annual coffee morning in the Church vestibule. A number of mums, their children and the parish godparents attended.

What makes a Marriage work? This is the question posed at the introductory party held to encourage couples to come to the course which has been has been designed to help any couple, married 2 years or 62 years to strengthen their relationship. It is a great opportunity to spend time together looking at the important issues in a marriage.

Over a candlelit supper and a talk, sharing only with each other discussion topics include: building strong foundations, the art of communication, resolving conflict, the power of forgiveness, parents and in-laws, good sex and love in action.

We have held four courses at St Andrew’s in recent years. In the past twelve months we have held two more courses with twelve couples attending in 2007 and seven this time around. This is hugely encouraging with marriage in our society under such pressure at the present time.

Ron & Jackie Stewart

Mothers’ Union

he Committee is pleased to report on a successful and active year. Despite the difficulties of running the Branch without a leader we hope you have been happy with the programme we have put together.

We have our usual winter tea party and the summer garden party at Jenny Mathieson’s. The annual outing this year was to Polesden Lacy and many members enjoyed a picnic in the grounds in lovely weather. The annual coffee morning was very successful and we made £430 in the morning, nearly £50 more than the previous year.

Our work in the Diocese has continued to grow, with members working at Highdown Prison, looking after the children in the Visits Hall, and at Send Prison as part of the listening project. We have also been involved with making and distributing small garments to the neonatal unit at St Peter’s Hospital.

We have had many excellent speakers, though attendance has been disappointingly low. We were honoured to have the Diocesan President, Margaret Beringer, soon after she was commissioned. A memorable talk was given by Elizabeth Cotton on ‘Slavery - Set All Free’ and we have followed this up with our recent evening meeting showing the film ‘Amazing Grace’.

Throughout the year the Branch has continued to support Church activities and have organised the Mothering Sunday posies, distribution of Harvest gifts, the Pram Carol Service tea and the weekly tidying of the Church and welcoming duties at the Sunday 10am service.

Oxshott Branch has 39 members, but sadly one or two members have moved away this year; Gloria Beard and Irene Campbell, an Indoor Member, who is in a nursing home in London. Wenda’s mother Elsie Scott, our oldest member in age - 103, died earlier this year and recently Joan Burnett died in a Nursing Home in Weybridge. We have been very pleased to welcome Ros Byerley as a new member this year and would like to encourage many other parishioners to join us.

We would like to thank Jeremy for his continued support throughout the year and also the members who attend regularly and encourage the Committee in their efforts.

Bereavement Support Group

· Parish Visiting – We continue to make contact with and where necessary provide individual support for the bereaved.

· The friendly informal Support Group – which meets on the second Tuesday of each month, continues to flourish. We have a rolling membership of ‘Older’ members of the group ‘moving on’ and new members joining. At the December meeting the Mulled Wine and mince pies were once again enjoyed!

· The Comfort and Memorial Service; moving to mid October was popular, but we decided reverting to the later time of 6 pm would be preferable as it was still so light at 5 pm we were unable to make full use of the wonderful new dimmer switches!

· The Summer Potluck Supper Party in the Torr’s beautiful garden on the ‘only’ dry warm evening of the summer was once again a great success with past and present members of the group joining for a relaxing social evening.

Training in 2007

wo extremely valuable discussion meetings were held at which medical social workers from the Princess Alice Hospice explained how the Hospice “package” works for patients and their families from the time of referral through to bereavement support. All who attended these evenings found them very instructive and helpful and we were able to make a presentation of £190 to the Hospice as a result of donations given by those who attended.

Leigh Hopper

Biddy Lewis

Junior Church

fter many years leading Junior Church, Karen Banks stepped down in July this year. Jane Endean and Nicky Barnes have taken over as the Junior Church Co-ordinators and are supported by a team of 24 leaders. The positions of responsibility are for the leading and teaching of the four different age groups (that is Scramblers (3-5 years), Climbers (5-8 years), Explorers (8-11 years) and Teens & In-betweens (11+)), a Music team, a Puppet team, a Family Support and Co-ordination post, a Publicity post, Pastoral helper, a Child Protection Officer and we have representatives on both the Parish & People committee and the Youth Council committee. Dominique in the Parish Office supports the Junior Church administration work.

At the beginning of each Junior Church session we take time for joint worship, songs, prayer and teaching which is linked with the Church calendar. This time together encourages the unity of the group. We then split into separate age groups for teaching following the Scripture Union syllabus, crafts and games.

Since September, Junior Church has been involved in a number of special events. We held a competition for the children to design a poster advertising the Gift Service. On 21^st December we ran a Christmas Craft & Teaching afternoon. This was attended by 41 children and ran successfully and smoothly thanks to the help of the 22 leaders involved. The children are keeping a Lent activity calendar and will be taking part in the Palm Sunday Service.

Twig

wig had another eventful year with monthly meetings for coffee, biscuits and ‘networking’. Our annual fundraiser - the ladies shopping evening, kindly hosted by Jackie Mazur – raised over £200 for the Oxshott youth club run by the church – OY! Ladies purchased clothes, jewellery, books, cards and baskets whilst having a delicious chilli supper, meeting people and catching up with old friends. Sue Taylor and Celia Conlan have handed over the administration for Twig to Margot Jones and Ashley Scott.

Toddler Praise

oddler Praise is an ideal way of introducing very young children and their parents to St Andrew’s. The Bible stories, songs and crafts involve children in a relaxed and informal way, and the time of refreshments and fellowship afterwards gives parents an opportunity to meet other members of the St Andrew’s family.

Confirmation

ast year we had eight teenage confirmation candidates and three adults. This year we have two teenagers and two adults plus one young person being confirmed through at her school chapel. The sessions are led by Jeremy Cresswell and Paul Otter with Valerie Pitt helping to lead the adult classes. The lower numbers are purely representational of a low in that particular age category. The young people are following a course called ‘Faith Confirmed’ a course for anyone considering confirmation. The sessions follow a book with visual aids such as DVD’s and talks.

Youth

Pathfinders: Sunday evenings for age 11-14

umbers this term have ranged from 5-20 young people attending each week.

The evening starts with prayer then we use the Bible in a variety of different ways to help the youth understand the passage including straight readings, dramas, modern paraphrases, drawings, movies and music. Scripture is studied both as a whole group and in smaller groups who then present their topic or passage to the rest of the group. The varied interactive studies help many of the youth engage with biblical teaching in a way that they all understand.

In the Spring term, the Pathfinders followed the Art of Connecting course in which we learnt how to share the good news of Jesus Christ with our friends and other people we meet by sharing God’s story and the story that is our lives because of Him. With the course, the youth have been given a book of daily bible study.

The sessions end with refreshments, games and a time of prayer to bring everyone back into the group.

“I like going to Pathfinders and have lots of good friends there now. We get to talk about how the bible applies to me today, this makes it a lot more relevant to me. It is good to chat about issues that apply to my life and see that people in the bible also had similar things happening. At Pathfinders I also like the games we get to play so the evening doesn’t become boring.”

Quest: Sunday evenings for 14 years +

etween 4 and 15 people normally attend this house group. As it is held in a house there is always a relaxed and casual atmosphere which helps everyone get along well.

Bible passages are discussed as a group as well as smaller teams who give feedback. Quest sessions are run by Paul who thinks of new and interesting ways to study the Bible, including drawing, writing or speaking about the passage. The sessions are not run with a very strict schedule as this allows any other ideas or thoughts which arise to be discussed.

Quest are following ‘The Art of Connecting’ course in order to equip the members in personal evangelism. It has been challenging each individual to discover their own story whilst learning about others and seeing how God has worked in their lives. The course teaches the importance of sharing your faith so that they can experience the love of God in their lives. As a result of this course we have all had the opportunity to share our personal testimonies with our friends in Quest, to see how God has worked in each of our lives and to look at where he may be leading us in the future.

Prayer is an important aspect of Quest. At the end of each session the group prays for issues in the world and for one another.

“I feel that Quest is a great way to end the week as it sets you up with a positive attitude and motivates you to put your faith into action during the week ahead. It gives you a chance to focus on what is important and helps you to gain a deeper understanding of the messages within the Bible. When you go to Quest you know that you will have an enjoyable time as well as learn something new about your faith.”

OY!

Y! has been running very successfully with a variety of activities including sports, crafts and cooking. These give the leaders a chance to get alongside the young people and spend time talking about any issues, Through OY! we have also managed to help young people find employment and some have now started coming to St Andrew’s for other activities (services, youth groups etc). Many of the young people lack an adult role model in their lives and this gives them the chance to spend time with adults who also want to spend time with them.

This term has unfortunately seen a drop in numbers partly due to a lack of communication but also some of the older members move on. This gives the team a great opportunity to find new members who have not yet come to OY! or have been on the fringes of the group. This will be easier in the summer term as there are more outside activities which attract boys who enjoy playing football.

“I really enjoy coming to OY! on a Friday night as it not only gives me and my friends somewhere to hang out and talk but also gives us some activities to do. We all enjoy the craft activities not only because we have something to take away with us but also because it gives us the opportunity to talk to the leaders. All the leaders are very friendly and willing to listen to our problems however big or small. I always look forward to Friday nights and hope they carry on for a long time.”

Youth Services

he youth services have been running very successfully for the last few months with numbers ranging from 40-65 with around 15-20 young people attending. The services have been in many different styles so they do not become repetitive. There have been a variety of speakers both from inside and outside St Andrew’s. The worship includes contemporary music primarily lead by the St Andrew’s music group. The services are organised by Valerie Pitt and Paul Otter who decide on themes, worship music and the general style of the service.

“The youth service has come on a long way since I went to my first one, it has moved away from being about the youth putting on a service for the rest of the congregation to a service that is directed towards the church’s younger members, to teach them and help them in their everyday lives. I enjoy youth services because they are focused and centred towards issues that personally affect me and people around my age. I particularly enjoyed it when we were in the hall and had an informal service. This was much more relaxed but still focused on the religious message. I believe having the service like this would be better and also it would be easier to bring newcomers along as they will not get intimidated by the aurora of the church. I prefer the music at youth services to other services; it is generally more modern stuff that is done in the style of music that we personally listen to in our everyday lives. Having a live band makes such a difference to a service and gives it a newer fresher atmosphere, which is more inviting to the younger generations.”

Office Address:

Oakshade Road

Oxshott

Surrey

KT22 0LE