The St Ed’s Annual report for 2023 is attached.

The document includes the Officers’ Reports to the 2024 Annual Parochial Church Meeting which is to be held at 7pm on Monday 20th May 2024.

A few words, below, from Rev Paul to set the context for the report.

Life in our churches, and life generally has not been easy in the past year. Yet the Lord’s grace and love goes ahead of us in all that we encounter. We live in times of trauma and change. There have been many challenges, as well as joys and celebrations.

We continue to witness the most unbearable suffering across the world, especially in Gaza and Israel, in Ukraine, in Sudan and in the wider impact of those conflicts. We pray for all those caught in these situations.

There have also been awful situations in our community we have been involved with. We look to the Lord’s comfort and hope in each of them.

As churches we continue to pray for the problems in the NHS, and with people obtaining treatment, and with the rising costs of everyday living especially affecting our young people. Life has become hard for so many. We do our best to listen, pray, and to be here for people.

The problems of climate change are experienced by all of us almost every day, and this is becoming a major preoccupation for young people. What kind of a world and a life are they inheriting?

Yet we have hope. St Paul writes in Romans 5. This is a passage that has meant so much to me personally :

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us”.

When we reflect and absorb these words, we realise the Lord does indeed go ahead of us, and much of the answer lies in our own discipleship, faithfulness and love.