One of our greatest mission assets is our beautiful building. It is also a big burden. Everyone here knows that it is cold, uncomfortable and that it can be hard to hear what is going on. Those who run groups or lead worship can testify how difficult it is to do anything informal in either the main building or the parish room and we have to question how suitable for purpose the building is. I know better than most, the legwork involved in its maintenance and you all know that we are desperately trying to raise money to fix the roof. So our building has to be part of our plan. Wouldn’t it be something if within the next five years we are completely on top of maintenance and have improved things to the advantage of those who come to worship, making some of the space flexible ?

This year we intend to take some serious steps in that direction. We are hoping that English Heritage will hear our pleas and award us a major grant to get the roof repaired in 2015 – they are looking at our application now. But in the meantime we shall be doing the following things:

First we shall replace the church sound system so that everyone can hear every word of worship. That will cost us around £2.5K of which £1k is being donated and the rest of which we shall find between us. We will also be installing a wall mounted heating system in the parish rooms so that the many groups who use the room during the day will be warm without us having to pay to heat the whole building. There will be no more trailing leads, plug in heaters and dangerous wiring!  With that start we also plan to re-order  the Parish room so that it is safe, and practical  for children’s work.

This will all cost more money which we intend to take from our building reserves. But it is long overdue.