St John’s Weekly Bulletin – Sunday 28 May 2017

Then, on Monday night, we celebrated the commissioning of Revd Bryce Amner as Priest-in-charge of the parish of Georgetown. The service was held at St Matthew’s Church, Georgetown and it was good to see some current and former parishioners celebrating with Bryce, Sally, and the parish community there.

This weekend marks the start of the process of electing a new bishop for our diocese. Our parish’s representatives on synod are Susan Thwaites, Howard Benson, and Andrew Roth. Please pray for them as they assist in our diocese’s decisions towards finding a bishop to lead us in the next part of what God is calling our diocese to do and be.

Blessings, Murray

This bulletin was emailed to members of the parish on Wednesday 24 May 2017 – if you would like to join the Weekly Bulletin email list, please call the church office on 02 4927 5399 and we will happily arrange this.

We are planning to take a collection for this project on Sunday, 28 May. Any members of St John’s who would be in a position to make a donation of $300 towards this project are very welcome to – Bishop Peter and Nicki have made the first pledge towards supporting the project in this way. Other donations will be combined and, as a church, we hope to be able to be able to send more lots of $300 to support this project.

1. Installation of a sound console desk.

Over the years in the church, a number of audio-visual technologies have been installed in the church. Because of the diverse number of technologies used, and the way that technologies change, storage for these technologies has never been consolidated. The area around the sound desk is cluttered and difficult to organise. An organised storage space has been on the parish council agenda for years. Alan Tipping, a member of the 9am service, drew up a design for a desk and parish council has approved the design and intends to apply for permission from the bishop to install the desk. The desk will be in a dark oak colour.

2. Church wall hangings

The current wall hangings in the church date from the era of a previous Rector who was named by Bishop Greg in sworn testimony to the Royal Commission. Parish Council feels that it is right to remove some of the more obvious marks in our church from that time, and intend to apply to the bishop for permission to remove the wall hangings in the chapel and on the west wall of the church.

Notice of these intended changes will be on the church doors for a period of fourteen days. Any parishioners who wish to comment on these changes may write to June Wooden, our Parish Secretary.

The two basic parts ways we do that are: Working With Children Checks, and Safer Churches Training.

1. The Working With Children Check (WWCC) is a history check through a person’s national government and employment records and flagging people who might cause concern if they were allowed to work with children. In NSW, a WWCC is a requirement for people who work or volunteer with children.

2. Safer Churches Training is another basic part of our effort to keep safe. It involved a one-day course to start with, with half-day refresher courses. The list of upcoming courses is found through the Diocese of Newcastle website at: http://newcastleanglican.org.au/mission-ministries/safe-ministry-training/ . We require volunteers to complete this training, but we strongly recommend that all parents and people with a passion to keep St John’s safe undertake this training. It’s an excellent resource for all parents who are concerned about the safety of their children, whatever institutions and groups they are associated with.

We have a new page on our website at http://www.saintjohns.com.au/children to provide easy links for you to be involved with a Working With Children Check or Safer Churches Training. This page can be found under the “Kids, Youth and Families” tab on our website homepage.