Dear all. We are very pleased to announce that we will shortly be welcoming our new Vicar. The Revd Liz England will join the benefice in September.After a very good recruitment process and some lengthy paperwork we received the following announcement from the Bishops office.'The Bishop of Chester is pleased to announce the appointment of the Reverend Elizabeth England as the next Incumbent of the Rural Daneside Parishes. Liz is currently Team Rector of the six churches in the Buxton Team Parish. A service to welcome Liz is planned for Monday 9th September at 7pm. More information will follow in due course’.We are all very much looking forward to meeting and welcoming her to our Churches and look forward to getting to know Liz and family in the coming months.As the Bishop has said, we will be having a welcome service on the 9th September which will be hosted at Swettenham Church. More details about this will follow in the coming weeks.It is a very exciting time when we welcome a new Vicar to our wonderful parishes and we are all looking forward to our futures together.
The Benefice office of the Rural Daneside Churches has been relocated from the Vicarage to new premises.The address is: Colshaw Heath FarmColshaw LaneSiddingtonMacclesfieldCheshireSK11 9LZThe office will usually be open on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.To contact the benefice administrator, during her working hours of Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, the number is 07443 902 191.The dedicated number for christenings, baptisms, weddings and funerals is 07410 223386.The vicarage landline will continue to be monitored during the week.
Metanoia: Let your mind be renewedDo come and join us for one or more of the special Lent services that will be held on Wednesday evenings at 7:30pm in six churches in the locality. It is the opportunity to come together with people from other parishes to take time out of a busy week and reflect on the season. Lent is a period of preparation for Easter beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending at sunset on the day before Easter Sunday. It gives us 40 days to express sorrow at the wrong things we have done and provides for a 40-day fast (Sundays are excluded), in imitation of Jesus Christ's fasting in the wilderness before he began his public ministry.The dates are:22nd February (Ash Wednesday) at Marton Church During the service, the minister places the ashes on a worshipper's forehead in the shape of a cross. The ceremony shows that a person belongs to Jesus Christ, and it also represents a person's grief and mourning for their sins — the same sins that Christians believe Jesus Christ gave his life for when he died on the cross.1st March Evensong at Eaton8th March Evensong - Birtles 15th March Evensong at Siddington22nd March Evensong - Hulme Walfield29th March Holy Communion at SwettenhamAfter each service, Lenten refreshments will be served.
Dear Friends, This month we, as a nation, mark an extraordinary milestone. For 70 years Queen Elizabeth has served our nation as monarch. She has done so with great grace and with personal reserve, and I shall be celebrating enthusiastically. There will be many things said about her character, and all that she has lived through, during this season of celebration. I should like to say one thing about her: that her reign has been about us. Perhaps it is the nature of our constitutional monarchy, or perhaps it is her Christian faith and her understanding of the nature of service most likely it is both. However it has come about, her lack of political agenda makes her able to represent all of us in a way no elected president ever could do. We do not know her opinions on many matters, or her thoughts on how these nations should be run. We know of her love of horses, but not her views on fiscal policy or on devolution. It is precisely her willingness to serve a people, not an agenda, that has made her the finest and most respected of democratic heads of state, the wide world over. Certainly there is privilege as well as responsibility that goes with royal status, and it may seem unjust that this comes as a birthright, but I cannot think of a better way to represent us all. To elect or select a champion may be to select the very best of us (though I’m not at all sure that this is what our elections unfailingly do!). But, to have one family represent us means that monarchy is not about merit. Her Majesty represents all of us, born into whatever places and families we find ourselves in.We are born to be a nation together, regardless of our talents or opinions. And for seventy years, without fear or favour, The Queen has stood as our champion, through wars and troubles, through prosperity and disputes. Without judgement or agenda she has been there for us, the extraordinary embodiment of our ordinary lives. So let us say it loud and long, today and tomorrow: God save our gracious Queen, Long live our noble Queen, God save the Queen! Yours as ever, Ian