St Martin’s House

Work began on site according to plan on April 12th with a bang, when Bishop Tim took to the controls of a big digger and ceremonially broke the ground for the new foundations of the Welcome and Entrance area of St Martin’s House. 

The event was attended by people representing all aspects of the local community, not least the Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire, Lady Jennifer Gretton, and the Lord Mayor of Leicester, Cllr Roger Blackmore, both of whom spoke warmly of what the project would bring to both county and city.  You can see some pictures of the event on the Diocesan and the Cathedral Square websites.

We also have a wonderful 3D ‘model’ of the building as it will look when completed, which is available to see at Church House, by request!  Our thanks to Peter Dobson, of the Cathedral congregation, who made this for us.

An early priority now is to move ahead on the appointment of a Centre Manager, as mentioned last month.  This will be an important job, which will involve everything from ensuring the practicalities of the building work as planned through to marketing the conference facilities, and ensuring the various tenants and users, diocesan and otherwise, all get on well together in their new home.   We’ll put some more about that on the website as soon as the details are finalised.

Prayer Pointers – pray for the advertising for the centre manager post, and for the right applicants to come forward.

- for Hallam Contracts, getting on with the work, and in particular for Martin Overfield the site manager.

The Square

A recent meeting of The Square Group just after Easter reviewed the various responses to the plans as developed so far, and agreed a process for responding to these.  We still need the formal support of CFCE in London, of the local planners in the Town Hall, and of course we need to be sure ourselves that the plans are the right ones for the Cathedral and the city.

The new city leadership and cabinet are also now known – and we begin building relationships with a new set of politicians, led by Cllr Veejay Patel.  He’ll have a lot on his plate – as we pray for him and his leadership, let’s also hope and pray he’ll find us a good part of the inheritance!

Prayer Pointer – for Jo and Alastair and their teams (our professional advisors) working with us on the next stage of finalising our proposals for The Square, especially ‘phase one’ in the Cathedral precincts

- for our relations with a new set of city political leaders

The Cathedral

You will probably have seen elsewhere that both the Director of Music, Jonathan Gregory and the Precentor, Stephen Foster, will be moving on this autumn – both for the best of reasons!   This is obviously a time of change for the Cathedral and they’ll need the support and prayers of the rest of the diocese even more over the next few months as they look at the right ways to fill these two key posts.

Prayer Pointer – pray for Stephen and Jonathan, preparing to move to new work, and for the Cathedral leadership as they work towards finding the right people to replace them

People

The end of the ‘caretaking’ stage of the old grammar school means the end of the car parking – so this month a special Goodbye to the final three of our attendants – Danny English and Ed Jepson, who have been with us from the beginning, and Alex Van Roose, who joined us last autumn.  All have been great in their different ways, helping us through the practicalities of this stage of things.   Danny is now developing his career in music teaching, Alex in music making, and Ed continues his studies in the construction trade.

Prayer Pointer – give thanks for Danny, Alex and Ed, and pray for the next stage of their lives

Last word?

The Easter season is now upon us, including the need for clergy to get a post-Easter break, and so I was doing my bit by preaching and leading worship at St Crispin’s in Braunstone Town the Sunday after Easter.  My text was “As the Father sent me, so I send you” and my back-drop was a book I’ve just finished reading by the sociologist Callum Brown called ‘The Death of Christian Britain’.    That may sound a bit depressing, but for myself I don’t find it so.    The first disciples in that Upper Room were about to launch out into a world that knew nothing of Christianity (it didn’t even have that name at that stage), and where the meaning of the message had to be demonstrated, rather than being assumed.   We too live more and more in a society which has moved within a generation from being part of a Christendom where the default assumptions in much of life were Christian ones to a situation where more and more people hardly even know what Christian faith is about, let alone have ever been to church – or know anybody who does.    Rather than trading on the default position “I must be CofE – I’m English” we’re now in the position with many people, of needing to start from scratch.    We need to hear again those words – ‘Don’t be afraid’, and ‘So I send you’.  It worked for them 2000 years ago.  Is there a reason it can’t work for us?

Pete Hobson – Project Director   12 April 2010