St. Joseph’s Church, Merry Hill, Wolverhampton

I’ve added a new little “widget” to saintjosephs.co.uk – a calendar that appears as “upcoming events” on the right-hand side of the screen.

Maintaining this will be the fun bit. So far I’ve added the Sunday services as weekly events, and the social calendar as one-off items, but need to know what the recurrence scheme is for Weds services and Circle, and may be able to do a better job of the 6.30pm services if they follow a monthly pattern. And I’m sure I’m missing loads of events. And DCC. And PCC. And so on. Please send me your events – or if you’ve got permission to post articles to the website, or want to be able to add events, then you should be able to do so anyway. Just go to the “site admin” screen and then look at the “Calendar” section on the left-hand side.

I’ll be doing a proper page for these Real Soon Now but before I lose the piece of paper from Hazel in the wash, here’s the vital stuff that you need to know:

8/5/10: Quiz night, 7pm until 9.30pm, featuring our ever-popular quizmaster Andy Bennett and the more popular fish and chips from over the road. Probably £5 but will depend on the price of fish!

3/10/10: Harvest lunch after the 10.30am service – bring and share.

4/12/10: Victorian fair, 11am until 2pm.

11/12/10: Church family party, 7pm to 9.30pm.

In August there will also be a summer walk with a stop-off at a pub, or perhaps more for those of us with a thirst.

Kids welcome too! All get together on Wednesday 10th March, 12.45pm to hear a talk about Promise Dreams. Soup, bread, sandwiches and squash will all be served.

For full details see the flyer.

I’ve added info from Liz about The Noise this Sunday – enjoy!

Liz has posted up this Christmas’s services sheet (with a little addition from me, thanks to Andy Evans). See you there!

On the 16th December at 7.30pm St Jo’s is host to the Wolverhampton Chamber Choir’s “Christmas Cracker” Festive annual charity concert in aid of MacMillan Cancer Support – “Christmas delights in song and verse”. For full details please see the flyer - it sounds and looks brilliant.

Great if you can buy tickets in advance, if you can’t then you can pay on the door. Refreshments included!

St Jo’s hosted a really successful – in that everybody had loads of fun, and loads of people came – Community Day on Sept 19th. Everywhere was open, everything was free, everything was for the whole community.

Here are some short clips of people talking about the event. Why I didn’t record more video of the actual things going on, I don’t know, although I had had only 5 hours sleep each night for the last week and was still jet-lagged. That also explains, in my mind if not objectively, why I couldn’t even remember what day it was. Sorry!

The report on 2008 is now up on the site – enjoy!

Thinking about coming to New Wine this Summer?  Over the last few years a group from St Jo’s has gone to the New Wine Summer Conference for a week’s holiday, camping, teaching and lots of fun!  A group is going this year to New Wine at the Bath and West Showground outside Shepton Mallet in Somerset between 2nd and 8th August (Central and South West , CSW or Week B).  We would love more people from St Jo’s to join us.

Check out the video at http://www.new-wine.org/ for an idea of what the week involves!  Its a great opportunity to receive in-depth Bible teaching, experience different styles of worship, go to some really interesting seminars and chill out with Church family.  The kids work is awe inspiring – being both large scale but also having a great leader-to-kids ratio meaning that children get the experience of a small group setting whilst being with hundreds of people their age.  The traffic-free site also means that they can have a lot more freedom than at home.  There is a great ‘Marketplace’ with lots of Christian resources and organisations, cafes, an arts venue for creativity and lots of world mission groups.

St Jo’s will be allocated a ‘village’ to camp in and generally we make a big circle shape so that we have space in the middle for socialising and playing!  You can bring your own tent or hire a tent or caravan which is put up for you.  It is also possible to use our area as a base and stay off site at a local B&B.

The best thing to do if you are interested in booking for the week is check out the New Wine website and talk to those of us at St Jo’s who have been.  There was a big show of hands on Sunday (15th March) as to who had been over the years!  Hilary Bannister co-ordinates our bookings so ask her for more details as to how to book.  The prices go up a little at the end of March – so its best to book before then for the best deal.

Tracey and I  are big fans of the Summer Conferences and would be happy to chat more – get in touch with us!

Geoff’s confirmed we’re good to go for the next Pints of View on the 29th March at 7.30 at the Merry Hill (pub!). See the PoV page for full details.

Meanwhile don’t forget the Quiz Night, Friday 13th March in the Church Centre. Tickets are £5 but you do get a fish support for that!