As is the tradition St Michael’s ended Feast week with a fabulous evening of entertainment, fellowship and fun. Bobby Thompson tribute act Tony Washington played to a packed church who had enjoyed a hotpot super. It’s always amazing to see the church building transformed for other uses and there has been a lot of furniture shifting this week! Huge thanks to the wonderful Next 900 team for all their hard work.
Taking part in the Houghton Feast Parade has become an annual cause for excitement and celebration for Space4 volunteers and service users alike. The weather was glorious and the onlookers cheered with support and encouragement – we think the pictures speak for themselves!
How quickly Houghton Feast comes around and how kind the weather was to everyone this year! After the usual opening ceremony on the Friday night Saturday brought the Craft & Produce Market in Church and the Parade in which Space4 took park.
There was a wonderful variety of stalls in church with all sorts of great things for people to look at an buy and there was a good footfall all throughout the day. The hot sandwiches went down very well as did all the homebaking. Huge thanks to everyone who contributed and to those who worked so hard getting the church ready for the the market and then turned around again at the end of the team. What a team!
Sunday morning we hosted the Feast Civic Service which was very well supported by the local community and many civic dignitaries. We enjoyed a sermon from Canon Provost of Sunderland Minster Stuart Bain.
After many meetings and hours of work by the team, our parish Profile is complete and is on the Diocesan website where our vacancy is being advertised. We are all really pleased with the contents and we hope you can feel the passion that went into creating such a wonderful depiction of our parish life. We hope this will all be recognised by the right candidate to succeed Rector Sue. Follow this link to view our Parish Profile. Priest in Charge – St Michael & All Angels
As we celebrated St Michael and All Angels this Sunday we gathered in the Kepier Hall for our worship followed by a bring and share lunch. We were joined by Heather and Peter Keogh who used to be regular attenders before moving to Cumbria; they brought along a beautiful cake for everyone to share. There was some hearty singing and we all enjoyed a thought provoking sermon from Roz Pickersgill. After the service we moved through into the Davidson Suite for coffee before returning to the main hall for a wonderful spread.
Huge thanks to everyone who helped to set up, served coffee and prepared food.
We always have our Harvest Festival a little early at St Michael’s because of our Patronal Festival and Houghton Feast and it was a delight to welcome Bishop Paul this morning to preside and preach. People were very generous with their gifts of canned and dried food which will be given to help replenish the Space4 food cupboard and gifts of money which will be donated to a charity that gives aid to Rohingya refugees.
Bishop Paul talked about our response to the graft that it takes to grow, harvest and produce our food suggesting that we need to give thanks, be generous and to graft ourselves. He went on to say that we need to graft to challenge unfair systems and practices that endanger our planet and the well being of those who inhabit it. We all enjoyed some informal chat over coffee and biscuits after the service.
We have had some beautiful weddings over the Summer period here at St Michael’s. It has been a huge delight to welcome Channing & Keegan, Rebecca & Alex, Sarah & Paul and Emma & Wayne with their friends and families to this stunning church and I am sure they will all agree they were made to feel very welcome on their special day and the lead up to it. To book your wedding here come along to vestry hour between 6pm and 7pm on the first Monday of each month and if you can’t make that ring our parish office on 0191 5121769 on a Wednesday or Thursday to make other
The final session of Summer Club took the form of a party and once again we had a good number of children. We changed the format as we had the services of wonderful childrens entertainer Tony Junior – he really kept the children engaged and there was lots of laughter and opportunities to join in. Entertainment was followed by a party buffet prepared by the wonderful kitchen team and then some more games and dancing. Ann Donkin from Gentoo joined us for a second time to do some face painting. Later on we took the opportunity to thank and cheer the marvellous team of people who have come along week after week to help out and they all got a little sweet treat. The team also had a surprise up their sleeves for Christine & Dawn with a glorious bouquet and some wine! We all said our goodbyes and sent the children off with a party bag filled with treats.
Learn new songs from our hymn book with Anne Harrison. Anne is a member of the Durham Diocesan Liturgical Committee and recently won the Thomas Cranmer Award for Worship for her outstanding contribution to music in worship. Anne was a member of the editorial team for our current hymn book. Please come along to support this event.
Over the school Summer Holidays we were fortunate enough to organise two trips for some of the local children to Bowes Museum. The funding was from Darlington Building Society and it was distributed by Bowes Museum – thanks to Ray from Durham Diocese for giving us the heads up on this. Two groups of 12 children with adult volunteers were able to go along and enjoy looking around the museum, special craft activities, circus skills, animal encounters and outdoor play areas. Everyone had a truly fantastic time so here are some of the photos of what they got up to.
