Community : Groups & things associated with the Church

We do have what folk regard as more obviously 'church' meetings, as in Bible Study and Prayer groups.

The Parish Magazine, Crossword, published as a folded A4 newsheet, deceased in 2005. Its Editor suffered grievous illness, and the Vicar took over for a while until he also fell ill and was incapacitated for almost a year. The Magazine fell by the wayside. More recently, developments in our initial cluster with St. George's and St. John's Colwick have bourne fruit in a new Cluster Magazine - again with an Editor who is not the Vicar- but also no name! ... Bits of it may eventually come on line.

A pattern seems now to be becoming characteristic of Parish Churches in suburbs. We used to speak once of there being "no sense of community" in the way that you might have found lots of activities centering on the parish church in an old village. Now we think instead in terms of people belonging to many overlapping and often conflicting communities, and try to work with the communities they already share in - which means that formal church groups do not happen in 'traditional' ways. This makes sense in a world where all the old boundaries have gone, and no one has a weekend any more. It makes a very untidy church, if you judge by the standards of the first half of the 20th Century. But it works.....

'Uniformed' There is a flourishing (Church Sponsored) Scout Group, with Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and (more independent, sincethey are shared between us and other Groups) Explorers, whose leaders are also regular members of the congregation.		Music We have for many years had no formal choir, but we have emjoyed a long tradition of good young organist and other musicians (who play strings, keyboards & woodwinds, and singers) from the Nottingham Boys' Choir, and the Nottingham Youth Orchestra.
Social The nearest events we have apart from Harvest Suppers and occasional lunches after morning service are Scout Quiz Nights (v. Popular)
Children Every weekday morning in school term-time Playgroup meet. There are creche facilities on Sundays. At Festivals through the year, we run busy Workshops for children and parents together - Christmas, Good Friday/Easter, Candlemass, Harvest etc.. which have turned out to be very popular. For some years we developed a ChurchSearch with the help of our two local infants & junior schools - a large kind of quiz, really - which requires the children to hunt all over the place for things. It needed strong nerves, but the results were magnificent : the best way ever to get young ones to explore and be really inquisitive about their own local church, and about how and why and what is it for and all that ... apparently they loved it, too - all that measuring and counting and poking about. This year we hope to revive it.