A Message from Bishop James
“Vision” – it’s a word that’s used by many people from all walks of life. In the Bible vision is always first and foremost about God.
This is clearly an important time in the life of St Mary's Church as you seek to explore, develop and implement God’s vision for your church.
I pray that you will be excited by the vision of what God is doing and longs to do in Grassendale and that your own vision of God will be enlarged as you trust him more and more.
We can think of Vision as “a picture of the future given to us by God”.
The Bible tells us that as a church we need God’s vision to give us a sense of purpose and direction.
However, Vision needs to be turned into reality or it will remain only a dream!
In essence our Vision at St Mary's is to help people to encounter God in ways that challenge and change their lives.
To do this we seek to be:
We believe that Worship – should fill us with awe at being in the presence of our heavenly Father, where we feel loved, forgiven and equipped to serve
Our worship should –
Expand our vision of who God is
Warm our hearts and deepen our love
Challenge and change our lives and inspire us to serve
We believe that it’s important to grow both in our love of Jesus and our knowledge of who Jesus is. We do this as we meet together in our worship and especially when we meet together in small groups.
We believe that every man and woman, boy and girl needs to encounter God in a way that is relevant to them and which challenges and changes their lives.
As a church we have many outreach events and opportunities such as the Alpha Course to engage with the basics of the Christian faith.
However, the most effective way of telling people the good news of a Saviours love is through our friendships
We believe that people matter to God and therefore, by God’s grace, we seek to reach out to people with God’s love through friendships, through building relationships and by helping to meet peoples needs
We believe that St Mary's Church is important in God’s plan to touch the lives of people in our community and that we all have a part to play.
We thank God that St Mary’s is a fast growing church that appeals to people of all ages and backgrounds.
We celebrate the fact that God has been bringing many new people to St Mary's Church through our excellent work with children and young people, through our work with our local schools, and through our baptism and wedding preparations.
Through the teaching in our church and particularly through the Alpha course and our Home Groups we have had the privilege of seeing many, many people growing in their Christian faith and understanding.
With this growth in mind St Mary's Church has been invited to be involved with some exciting Diocesan developments and initiatives.
St Mary's has been invited to be one of ten churches throughout the Diocese to take part in the ‘Going for Growth’ process. This is a three-year process designed to provide specialist consultation, support and training to enable us to grow both numerically and in Christian maturity.
It begins with a simple but effective evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the church and then provides the framework to address areas of our church life.
The ‘Going for Growth’ process has already begun and we eagerly wait with anticipation to see all that God will do in our Church through it!
St Mary's is now recognised as one of the seventeen largest churches in the Liverpool Diocese and as such has been invited to be part of the newly formed ‘Large Church Network’ designed to resource and equip large churches to further grow and develop.
We hope that through the pages of our website you will get a flavour of what the Lord is doing in this place.
