BYC – September update

As planned, the builders are now on site and hard at work tackling the clearance of the ancillary buildings, in preparation for their refurbishment!  As you can see from the pictures below, they have been removing ceilings, walls and cupboards as required, and dealing with the electrics, alarms, etc.; they are on schedule.

St Andrew’s is now in full ‘business as usual’ mode! The arrangements for using different venues across the village are working well. But we still need to be flexible, so do check the Weekly News and elsewhere on this website for details of the timing and location of services, meetings and other events.

The Church Office has been relocated for the duration of the project to the southwest corner of the church itself – a complicated move in itself, with power, telephones, printers, wi-fi, etc. – so opening hours will be more limited, but contact by email or telephone will be picked up as promptly as possible.

Thank you again for all your ongoing support and prayers.

Hall
Vestibule

Quiz Night — Thank you from Christian Aid

A big thank you to all those that took part in the St Andrew’s quiz last Friday night at the Royal Kent School. After nine hotly competed rounds of quizzing the Quizzy Rascals team (connected to the Monday Evening Life Group) became the proud holders of the St Andrew’s Quiz trophy.

They will have to pass it around the team quickly as they will only hold on to it until the next quiz evening in May next year! Due to the generosity of all those involved we have been able to send a donation of £1,350 to Christian Aid this week to support their work in helping people like Aline Nibogora from Burundi to work their own ways out of poverty. Take a look at the video below to see what a difference your generosity can make.

Thank you from Aline, Christian Aid and Mark Currie.

Me and My Mug

Whilst we are bringing our own mugs to church at the Royal Kent School, we are inviting people to share the story behind their mug. If you and your mug have a story, please let us know, and share it!

You can read the stories we have received below.


Richard Bath

I got this from Guildford Cathedral gift shop and it reminds me and us about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self -control – and the cross is just something extra!

(Our St Andrew’s @4 service on 13 October was about the Fruit of the Spirit, which are on Richard’s mug…)
 


Adele Wright

A Mug’s Story

I’m usually sitting on a shelf amongst Cosy Bear, Spots, Memories and Best. These are all mugs my owner Adele uses depending on how she is feeling on a particular day.

I feel quite chuffed because I’m often her go to mug when she needs some peace and quiet over a cuppa. It reminds her that God is close, he is in control, and this always makes her smile. Suffice to say other people see me too!


Patrick Davies

When I was training for ordination at Trinity College in Bristol, I would often take a walk across Durdham Downs to Clifton Village during our weekly quiet morning – a dedicated time of silence, for prayer and reflection. I would usually find a nice little coffee shop, and spend an hour or so with a book and a mug.

My favourite place served its drinks in these mugs, which were made locally – so when I came to leave from college I bought myself one – which now serves to remind me of the importance and joy of slowing down and spending time in quiet with God.


 

A change to Sunday 10am services during the building work

Dear Church Family,

As we commence our long awaited and much needed building refurbishment, I am writing to you to advise of, and explain, a temporary change of venue for our Sunday morning 10am services.

After prayer and careful thought along with our Churchwardens, and with permission from Bishop Andrew, it has been decided that from Sunday 22 September our 10am Sunday services will be held each week at the Royal Kent School.

As a church our vision is to ‘Grow in Faith, Grow in Number, and Serve our Community.’ The Diocese of Guildford’s vision is to ‘Grow Disciples, Grow Diversity, and Grow Community’. We are committed to providing a warm welcome, excellent ministry with families and children, wonderful hospitality and strong fellowship, particularly around our main 10am Sunday morning worship service. The limitations of soon having no running water, very basic chemical toilets, and only the main worship space in church will cause significant challenge to achieving this.

Fortunately, we have the very kind offer to use the Royal Kent School for Sundays – a venue which has all the facilities we need – meaning we are able to hold onto these important characteristics and priorities as a church together in this season.

Moving venue will not mean a change to our current style or pattern of services – and we will keep this decision under constant review – returning to the church building as soon as it is ready and able meet the needs of our worship, mission and ministry within our vision and values.

I recognise that this is not what we all would ideally prefer – however, I believe that the benefits of moving temporarily to the RKS do outweigh the disadvantages. For those who would much prefer to be in the church building for worship, our Mid-Week Communion each Wednesday at 11.30am will remain at St Andrew’s, and the worship space will be made available for prayer during the week. We will also ensure that certain ‘special’ services do take place at St Andrew’s – including a Memorial Service at the end of October, and an act of Remembrance in November.

Interestingly, I recently discovered that regular Christian worship was taking place at the Royal Kent School (on its site in the High Street) for many years before St Andrew’s Church was built – so it is somewhat fitting to return to the RKS’ present site for worship as our church’s building is renewed.

As I mentioned in my sermon on Sunday 8 September, we are a family as church together – God’s family – and it is love that makes the family work. It is my prayer, therefore, that we would turn the inevitable inconveniences and irritations into opportunities to live out generous love toward one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

With much love,

Patrick

 

We have a new Vicar!

At a very happy and packed service on 4 September, Patrick officially became our new vicar.

As Bishop Paul said, it is difficult to think of a more worthy and appropriate successor to Frances, held in our prayers along with Jolyon and her family. We believe that Patrick was chosen for this post by God and not by us, as wonderfully illustrated in our reading from John 15.

Patrick was ‘collated’ to St Andrew’s by the Bishop – making him legally responsible to care for the souls of all who live in our parish, and then ‘inducted’ by Archdeacon Martin to own and care for the building. Area Dean Renos and members of the church ‘introduced’ Patrick to the church building that he already knows so well, and was welcomed by representatives from across the community.

We sang praises to the Lord, and celebrated with people young and old from all over Oxshott. Bishop Paul thanked all those who have cared for the church during our period of vacancy, as well as those who organised this joyful event; the celebrations continued after with wine and canapés at the Royal Kent School.

A church, much like every Christian, depends on regular renewal and we have now started a new and exciting chapter in the life of our parish.

If you missed the service you can watch it below.

BYC – August update

The good news was announced in church this Sunday (11 August) that the long-awaited refurbishment of our ancillary buildings will start next month!

As you will be aware, we have been working with our advisers and contractors to produce an exciting scheme of refurbishment, within our generous budget, and we now have sufficient clarity to announce that work will start in September, straight after Patrick’s collation and induction as Vicar.

A priority will be fixing the (leaking!) roof, so the corridor and rooms off it will be the first to be impacted….  but we fully intend to carry out as many of the usual St Andrew’s activities as we can. We already have various arrangements in place for use of the Village Centre, the Royal Kent School and the new Scouts & Guides centre, so please be ready to be flexible and alert to changes in venue over the coming months!

We will bring you more news shortly, and appreciate your ongoing support and prayers.

Mount Snowdon conquered!

Caelyn and Elijah Lim successfully completed their epic trek up Mount Snowdon, along with their Mum, to raise vital funds for the London’s Air Ambulance Charity – the first people to respond when their dear Papa needed help. In August it will be 10 years since they lost their Dad in a cycling accident.

They have raised a whopping £6,412! It’s not too late to donate. If you would like to support their challenge, please visit their just giving page.

We had a joyful Breakfast!

We were thrilled to host the Garden Route Children’s Trust (GRCT) Breakfast for Breakfasts last Sunday (7 July) in the church hall.

As Ruth Burns, one of the GRCT’s Trustees, reports, “It was a wonderful, joy-filled occasion, which was a delight in itself. Added into the mix was the huge generosity which raised a whopping £1,710 – even before Gift Aid. The answer to the question on the poster, ‘How many can we feed?’ turns out to be more than 85 children for a whole school year. Amazing! Patrick Fleming and I, on behalf of all the GRCT trustees, are very grateful.

“Thank you to everyone who came, donated even when they could not attend, the church office for running a great series of advertising and printing posters for us, Deborah Hoepfl for donating the big jar of delicious rusks, Ben Christie from ‘Munch and Wiggles’ for personally delivering my pastry order to church on the day so that everything was fresh and Revd Patrick Davies for integrating our event and messages into the 10am service in church that immediately followed.”

If you missed Ruth talking about GRCT at the All-Age service on Sunday you can catch up in the video clip below.

 

Mission Partnering Survey

The Mission Partnering Committee are keen to get your views as a valued member of the St Andrew’s Community about our work with mission partners. We should therefore be most grateful if you would complete and submit this survey sharing your views on the relative importance of the five marks of mission, the way we keep you informed of mission partner activities and how connected you feel with our current mission partners. We would like responses to be received before the end of August.

We will use the information gathered to make sure your views are factored into our medium term plans for extending our mission work beyond our own church community.

If you would prefer to fill in a paper version of the questionnaire these will be available in the vestibule for return to the church office.

Regards

Mark Currie

Chair of the Mission Partnering Committee

BYC – May update

As you may be aware, because of the increased building costs of our planned project we had applied for a grant from Your Fund Surrey to put alongside our own significant contribution.

They have now advised us, that, with regret, this has been declined. Whilst they say “they were supportive of our ideas and can see that they could provide some valuable benefits to the community, the additional benefits to the broader community are not sufficient or broad enough” for them to contribute.

This is obviously disappointing, but there is much good news: we now have the certainty of our new Vicar in Patrick, and we continue to see the growth in various newly-created activities. And because of people’s generous giving, we do have the money to deliver some considerable enhancement and improvements to our buildings, and indeed we are now free from any obligation to outside funders.

We have therefore decided to move forward, and we are already engaged with our advisers and contractors to produce a more modest, but still exciting scheme.

We hope to bring you news of more detailed plans and dates in the coming weeks. We are optimistic that work might be able to start this  summer, and appreciate your ongoing support and prayers.