Progress on Kairos
As we reported back in May 2005 our Kairos teams dreamed dreams, talked to the wider community, made contact with other organisations in the village, audited our own organisation and drew up action plans to put our church more at the centre of the community we serve. In the update below the bold type indicates the original proposal and the text below describes progress with those projects since the last report in the magazine early in 2006.
1. Improve Communication
a. The Parish Magazine: The move to professional production of the magazine is working well and we are pleased with the partnership with the Parish Council regarding the two special editions a year which are delivered free to every household in July and December. We strive to ensure it is a magazine which truly serves the whole community.
b. Our website, www.stnicholaswickham.org.uk, is developing well and draws more and more attention. It is just the modern instrument we need. An increasing number access the site. A man from Canada attended one of the concerts last year because he had found our website!
c. Communication generally is something which we constantly look at. Sometimes events overtake us. For instance, we would like to have put advance notice in the magazine about the recent moving of the Knowle War Memorial back to Knowle but, after a long wait, arrangements suddenly fell into place after magazine copy date! We are conscious too that communication has to be wider now as we develop our links with Shedfield.
2. Open up the Church and Church Room for wider community use
a. Re-configure the inside of the Church to open it up for a wider range of activities. There is some funding for re-configuring the crossing area of the church/making it more flexible, but plans have yet to be agreed and taken forward. Even so, we still manage to stage a variety of activities, including exhibitions and concerts. There was another excellent Come and Sing in January 2006, Music Week held five concerts and there was another successful Big Draw in the autumn as well.
b. Review the Church Room to increase range of social events and cater for different interest groups. As regards the Church Room, we still have plans to refurbish the toilets and provide access for the disabled; we hope to be able to go ahead with these in 2007. As you will see in 3) below we have tried using the Church Room for different social events.
3. Hold a wider variety of events and co-operate in doing so with other organisations in the village.
We branched out again last year and held our first Mardi Gras in February 2006 and tried a Burn’s Night in January this year. Some preparatory work was done last year for re-introducing the Beating of the Bounds at some future date. We co-operated in 2006 with Wickham Scouts and Wickham Cricket Club to hold a Barn Dance with Pig Roast in the Community Centre, sharing the workload, the fun and then the profit between us.
4. Appoint a Parish Administrator.
Jane Goulson is now well established in post and is shouldering more and more of the work. She has special responsibility for liaison work on weddings and baptisms.
5. Review Church Services:
Reverends Shirley Henderson and Reverend Elizabeth are reviewing services as they work through their first year in this parish. The first Sunday in each month is a Family Service and on two Sundays in the month there is an evening service. During the week prayers are said daily at 8.30am and on Tuesdays there is a Communion Service in the Lady Chapel at 10am, except on the first Tuesday when we meet at Normandy Court. One exciting development is the plans for Easter Services, so please see other parts of the magazine for details of these.
6. Wider Community Involvement by providing financial, practical and human support to local organisations in need.
This project often depends upon invited involvement and St. Nicholas and its individual members respond where they can, e.g. by supporting other charitable organisations in the village. We may not have been able to do as much under this heading as we would have liked and are aware of financial constraints.
7. Audit our skills/acquire training
so that we can answer community needs, run courses, meet listening requirements and respond to one-off tasks required by other groups in the village. The audit has been completed and reported to the PCC. We are now looking at acquiring some of the necessary training.
8. Development of a plan for the use of Diocesan church (or other) land for affordable housing.
This is a long term project to provide intermediate housing. The Kairos team is preparing the way for establishing a Community Land Trust and this project has been selected as one of twelve national pilots schemes. Please see Nic Holladay’s item elsewhere in this magazine regarding the forthcoming housing survey. Portsmouth Diocese has pump primed this project and Bishop’s Waltham deanery has also allocated a substantial grant.
9. Campaign for Safer Crossroads:
The petition and demonstration in 2005 and follow-up petition in 2006 earned the support of our local Hampshire County Councillor and MP and led to a review of the crossroads by Hampshire County Council officials. The upshot is that traffic specialists have considered a whole range of solutions to the problem but have come down in favour of installing traffic-lights. Councillor Allgood wrote about this in December’s magazine. We are really pleased that he has proposed it for action in 2008, but we need to be realistic in our expectations. Other road safety requirements elsewhere may take precedence. Meanwhile, St. Nicholas is willing to relinquish some of the church frontage onto the A32 to enable this plan to go ahead.
10. Look at and beyond boundaries, to enable us to work across parishes, share resources and expertise etc.
Members of the PCC may be ahead of the rest of this parish in that they are getting used to working across parishes and have now enjoyed two annual get-togethers. Our choir is now working quite often with Shedfield’s and will be joining them in an exchange trip to Sweden in May. Members of the congregation are getting more acquainted with clergy from Shedfield and Swanmore and individuals are gradually getting used to the idea of visiting St. John the Baptist in Shedfield. Meanwhile, bell ringers from both parishes regularly support each other and Shedfield congregation are good at supporting our two Sunday evening services.
I hope this puts you in the picture a little more as to the work which has been going on and the progress made. Thank you to all those who have helped or are still working on putting our proposals into action.
Judy Lucas, Kairos Representative
