Reports
.
June 2013
Team Service - 'Journeying Together'
Picture of Upleadon Church
The 30th June was a 5th Sunday in the month so we had another of our 'United Team Services', this time at St Mary's Church Upleadon, where the church was full with members of the congregations from our 9 parishes. In his sermon our rector, Rev'd Tony Lomas, introduced the diocesan initiative 'Journeying Together' and our Benefice's response. (Return to top)

Last November, the Bishop of Gloucester introduced a new strategy defining our 'mission, purpose and objectives' for 2012 - 2016 and challenged the benefices and parishes to adapt and adopt it for their own area. Our Ministry Focus Group has worked on this and agreed a slight modification to the 'Mission' statement and a first priority focus for each of the four strategy objectives. For more detail, click here. (Return to top)
Midsummer Festival - Festival Eucharist
Picture, Altar Table
The well attended, Festival Eucharist on Sunday 23 June was a fitting culmination to the Midsummer Festivities. Surrounded by the splendid floral arrangements, we sang some of the finest hymn tunes bequeathed  to us from  our local composers including Howells' “All my hope on God is founded”,  Parry's “Dear Lord and Father of mankind”,  Vaughan Williams'” Come down O love divine” and Holst's “O God beyond all praising” to the tune more familiarly associated with “I vow to thee my country”.  During the communion, the choir sang Elgar’s setting of “Ave Verum”. (Return to top)
Midsummer Festival - Flower Festival
Picture, Pulpit - Elgar
The middle day of this year's Festival, Saturday 22 June, was focused around a Flower Festival with live music all day, provided by local musicians. The theme for this year's display was 'Local Composers'. All the displays interpretted a piece of music by a local composer or by a local musician. (Return to top)

The displays included 'The Planets' by Holst (born in Cheltenham), Jerusalem by Parry (Highnam) and various works by Elgar (Malvern). For pictures of the displays, click here. (Return to top)
Midsummer Festival - Concert
Picture, The Augmented Choir
The Festival began on the Friday evening with a gala concert given by our augmented church choir and musicians taught by, or friends of our Musical director, Bob May including cellists Liz Tremblay and Derek Aviss, pianist Colin Willis, and soprano Charlotte Firth. (Return to top)

They played and sung traditional pieces that were well received by the appreciative audience including works by Bach, Mozart, Handel, and Chopin but also more modern pieces by Gershwin, Wolf, Stanford Elgar and Sullivan and a series of traditional 'folk' songs. (Return to top)
Family Service - 'Celebrating Fathers'
Picture, Young Singers
Our regular Family Service on the second Sunday of the month (June 9th) was one week before 'Fathers Day' so we decided to 'Celebrate Fathers' a week early! (Return to top)

The 'Young Voices' (Junior Choir) sang a special anthem celebrating Fathers written last year by themselves and set by our Musical Director, Bob May, to the familiar tune 'Thank you for giving us this morning'. The sermon was in two parts, the first looked at ideas of what makes a good father and the second talked about the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son who went out to greet his wayward son when he came to his senses and returned home, much as God reaches out to us when we return to him (Luke 15:11-32).(Return to top)

And the Young Voices finished off with a Rap about dads! (Return to top)