Verse for 2012, “as for me and my household, 

we will serve the LORD."  (Joshua 24:15, NIV) )

Dear reader,

I am using this month’s magazine letter to update you about what’s going around the St Catherine’s building.

People have asked me what’s going on with the hospital and when things will be completed, to which I usually

respond with a blank look. I have now spoken to someone from the PCT and one of the contractors and we

now have some idea of a timetable.

Going back 18 months to 2 years, we asked for people’s responses to some drawings done by the planners.

A modified version of one of these drawings emerged as people’s favourite. The idea being that the Church

building would be a focal point of the new development. From the hospital’s point of view it is old and so ties

the site to its past and distinctive. From the Church’s point of view, the development opens us up whilst keeping

a distinct boundary. What we hope from this is that the Church will become more visible and less hidden away.

There will be lots of people walking past our back door between the hospital and the pharmacy. Also, at the

moment people can freely walk into our grounds hidden from site by the wall, allowing for some degree of mischief.

The new plans will mean this area will be relatively well lit and in view. This generally improves security.

  Having canvassed views and obtained the permission, everything has gone a bit quiet. However, the plan is to

start the work around the Church grounds in a month or twos time. It will be done in phases so that there will always

be access to Church. We have given the contractors a typical weekly time table so they know what normally

happens and some key future dates (e.g. a couple of weddings) which they will be mindful of and work around.

They aim for the hospital itself to open its doors to the public in July this year.

On a similar note, we mentioned that we had two legacies from the estates of Ev Thomasson and Stella Robinson

and had asked the Church family, some of whom remember these two Christian women, what might be a fitting

tribute to them. The big thing that came back would be some re-ordering of the Church building. The PCC met

with an architect who had some drawings to show us, we hope to have some up in the Church lounge for you to

see soon. The basic idea is to extend the existing lounge forward with the ability to have it as one big hall space,

or two lounge spaces, with another room over the extended area (for structural reasons it is likely to be too expensive

to build over the existing lounge) and some extra storage. Also with the new hospital car park, the back door

becomes the most obvious way in and we hope to make this a more attractive area. At the same time there has

been the desire for a while to do the high level plaster work and re-wiring. It makes sense to do all of this at once.

We probably have about half of the money needed to do this.

I write this, to keep you all in the loop. It takes ages to get anywhere with building work, but things can suddenly

happen. Of course, although we associate any Church with the building, we know that the Church is the people.

Therefore we are concerned with that building project and don’t want all our energies lost in a building that

won’t last into eternity. However, we must use the resources God has given us, e.g. a building, to serve that end

of building his Church.

 

Yours

Darren