In by Easter?

extract from Newsletter - 4 March 2001

Our new church is progressing well, even though the handover date has slipped by a few weeks. Some of you have been enquiring if we will be in for Easter this year - the answer is a resounding YES. Our contractors are working flat out to make sure that we will be in for Easter. The maple floor in the hall was completed this week along with most of the worship space. The cost of furnishing the whole complex with seating and other furniture is about £70K (seventy thousand pounds). Chairs for the church are particularly expensive - nearly £100 each. These are exactly the same quality chairs found in Westminster Cathedral.

As I sat in one of them last Monday ... no, the though never entered my mind that we could perhaps borrow a few of these for our new church! We have placed our order with the same suppliers, Kirkhouse, for 450. So far a few people have kindly offered to sponsor a chair. It would really help my negotiations with the Diocesan Finance Committee if I could tell them that the furnishings for the new church and hall were being sponsored. It makes good economic sense to buy everything in bulk and to buy it now. Unfortunately this is the one item in the new church not free of VAT. Please do the best you can.

It was encouraging to have met with some of the young mothers this week along with Patrick and Teresa from the school to consider ways of making best use of our new centre to build up the St Joseph's Family. More about this later on.