Dear Everyone,You will be reading this letter 2022, but I am writing it at the end of December (29th). Even the few days difference could change our view of the future.Starting by looking back, 2021 has been a difficult year for everyone because of Covid-19. Many of us got vaccinated in the first few months of 2021 and had our second doses 6 months later. Younger people had to wait till the end of 2021 before they could get vaccinated. Now we are facing another wave of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. Looking to the future it is still too early to be certain how this wave is going to play out, but there is hope. Although the infection rate is very high the numbers of people in hospital and dying may be much lower than earlier in the pandemic. This could be clearer by the time you read this letter. Whatever the Covid-19 situation, I think we still have a duty to look after ourselves and others by acting in a way that slows the spread of the virus.I hope that by the end of January we will have appointed a new Organist and Choir Director, and that this will strengthen all our musical activities. I also hope that we will be able to start having concerts again. One concert that we have already arranged is a recital by David Briggs on Wednesday May 25th at 7:30 p.m. David was once an Assistant <span style="font-size: 1rem;">organist at S Alban’s and now an organist of world renown. I also look forward to restarting concerts by students at the Conservatoire.</span>Another hope I have for 2022 is the return of students from Ark St Alban’s Academy to the church for Collective Worship. We had hoped to have our usual Academy Christmas Services in church, but the rapidly worsening Covid-19 situation meant our plans had to be cancelled. The same was true for the Bach Choir 9 Lessons and Carols service.Another hope is for an Anglo-Catholic missioner funded by the Church Commissioners to work with us and four other churches. To help our grant application for a missioner I would like us all to think about our Church’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities for our church, and Threats to our church. I also would like to know what you think are the most important things about our church — our core identity, how we are seen by the parish and what do we aspire to be.As you can see from this letter, we have lots to think about, lots to do and lots to pray about. Let us go into 2022 with hope and faith, and be open to possibilities.
1. We have now advertised the post of Organist and Choir Director. There were a lot of people involved in putting the job description and advertisement together, but I would particularly like to thank, our Diocesan Music Adviser, for his advice. Assuming a suitable candidate applies we hope to make an appointment in early January. In the meantime, thanks to B, who is doing a great job of finding us organists and arranging the music2. St Alban’s church is part of a bid put forward by the Diocese for an Anglo- Catholic Missioner. The background is that both the Diocese and the Church Commissioners are keen to explore ways of helping churches in the Anglo- Catholic tradition flourish. There is a tried and tested way of helping Evangelical churches grow but there is no equivalent for Catholic Anglicans. I hope that we all feel excited and privileged to be part of finding a way for Anglo-Catholic Churches to grow. We have been successful in our stage one application: now the PCC, standing committee and I, must work together on the next stage of the application. This will complement the work we have to do on our Transforming Church Action Plan.For us music will be an important part of our mission and outreach. That’s why I am <span style="font-size: 1rem;">especially pleased that we are advertising for a new Organist and Choir Director. They will be important in our attempts to grow our traditional Masses. As far as I’m aware our Sung Masses are unique in Birmingham and an important part of our future. While being a unique selling point, we must be realistic and recognise that the appeal of our 10.00 a.m. Masses is limited, and we need to work hard to make sure that they are widely publicised, so that everyone who does like our form of worship knows about us. We also need a new Organist who is sympathetic to the use of community music projects to grow different (Catholic) congregations at our church. I have written before that I look to cathedrals for a model of how we should work. Cathedrals have excellent traditional worship in addition to a huge variety of contemporary worship and activities. I believe that St Alban’s can lead the way on revitalising the traditional and exploring the contemporary.There are lots of opportunities for St Alban’s. The Parish is changing as the Rea Valley Urban Quarter is developed. There is already new housing stretching from Gooch Street across into St Luke’s Parish. There will be lots of new housing in the Parish and there will be some people looking for a spiritual home. We need to make sure that they can find that home with us.
There is much to reflect on in the news and society at the moment. Covid-19 is still a big issue and I have written a separate reflection in it the magazine.There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Gal 3:28I don’t normally watch football, but I did watch on the final of the of Euro 2020, though it was in July 2021. Even if you don’t watch football, you are probably aware that England lost in the final on penalties. You probably also heard about the racist abuse of Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka that followed. I think it’s important to reflect on this and say something.I would have thought that anyone watching would have been moved by the obvious anguish of Marcus Rashford when the ball hit the post, but it seems not everyone felt compassion. We know that some people let rip a torrent of racist abuse against 3 young black men. Natalie Elphike MP sent a WhatsApp message to colleagues snidely suggesting that the Marcus Rashford should have spent more time “perfecting his game” than “playing politics”. Others politicians are charged with hypocrisy because while they condemned the racist abuse, they previously complained about players taking the knee. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. Galatians 5:22-23One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is kindness. Whether we are Christian or not we can all appreciate the value of kindness. Kindness does not criticise talented young men for missing a penalty. Kindness is not racist or unjust. Kindness sees the best in people and encourages them.I don’t follow football, I don’t know Marcus Rashford, but it seems to me, that he is a role model of kindness, and of fighting against poverty and injustice. As a church we need to think about how we promote kindness, justice and fairness in our community.Our foodbank is one way that we already help fight poverty. Giving space and time to Local Welcome to provide meals for Asylum seekers was another way we did this, though Covid-19 means that this no longer happens. For the future I hope that we can start a drop-in for asylum seekers and refugees when the pandemic allows.Matthew 28:19-20Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’Looking around our church we are declining rather gathering new disciples. It’s not easy to follow Jesus’ command to make disciples and I think this is particularly difficult within a traditional Anglo-Catholic church. Just think of our young people: traditional ways of engaging our youngsters like serving don’t cut it anymore. Long services of traditional music might be attractive to some young people but not to ours. What is the way forward?We should carry on our 10am traditional Mass for those who like it but every one of us has the responsibility for publicising and bringing along people who like Sung Mass. We need more though. The Anglo-Catholic churches in our deanery are getting together to write a grant application for an Anglo-Catholic resource church. I am also talking to people in our diocese about what youth work we can do. It’s important that we fully support both those initiatives. That doesn’t mean coming to events that are not your cup of tea, it means acknowledging that they are valid forms of worship and accepting that in order to survive St Alban’s has to be diverse.Fr Gerry
In my last letter I wrote about the Pollock brothers and their concern for the living conditions of the people of Highgate in the 19th Century. Today we would say that some of those bad conditions were caused by pollution. I would like to think a bit more about that in this letter.Global warming was not a problem that the Pollock brothers would have known about. The study of climate change was in its infancy. In 1837 Louis Agassiz had put forward his proposal that the Earth had been subjected to ice ages. The Serbian mathematician and geophysicist Milutin Milankovitch was born in 1879, but was yet to produce his work that related long term climate change to the Earth’s orbit. In 1847 Joseph Fourier wrote, "The establishment and progress of human societies, the action of natural forces, can notably change, and in vast regions, the state of the surface, the distribution of water and the great movements of the air. Such effects are able to make to vary, in the course of many centuries, the average degree of heat; because the analytic expressions contain coefficients relating to the state of the surface and which greatly influence the temperature. However, it was not until the mid 20th century that the effect of burning fossil fuels on the Earth’s temperature started to become a concern. In the 1980’s climate scientists came to a consensus that our human activity was causing global warming. Today nearly all scientists believe global warming is a massive problem and needs to be addressed urgently. We can’t know what the Pollock brothers would have made of the issues of global warming and pollution if they had today’s scientific knowledge. I think they would have been active in trying to do something and would recognise that concern about the environment is a continuation of their mission in the 19 Century.The Diocesan Synod adopted the resolution that the Diocese of Birmingham should have net zero carbon emissions by 2030. So, what are we doing at St Alban’s church?We are replacing all the easily accessible lighting in the church with LEDs or low energy bulbs. The quality of LEDs has improved dramatically since the lighting in church was renewed and it is now possible to get dimmable LED lights. Chris has recently replaced some of the lighting in church with LEDs and it is impossible to tell which bulbs have been replaced. The higher up spotlights will be more difficult to replace because they are not so easily accessible.The contracts for electricity and gas supply are due for renewal and we have replaced the existing contracts with ones that provide 100% electricity and 50% of the gas from renewable sources.Global warming is not the only environmental issue that we can tackle in our church. We can also manage the land round our church for wildlife. Some grass does need to be kept short but in other places we can leave cutting the grass until late August or September. This will allow wild flowers to grow and the grass and flowers will provide food for birds and insects. We can also plant or replace shrubs with native species that are better for wildlife.Let us go forward to working for a better environment and let’s celebrate our work.#environment
