	Welcoming the Stranger
	For six weeks in January and February I spent my placement for Reader training with you at Norbury. My purpose was to learn as much as I could about the life of your church, and to join in as much as I could with the host of things that go on in a big parish. Norbury is very different from my own smaller, more rural and rather more traditional home base. My purpose in writing this is to let you know that, thanks to you, I learned an enormous amount that will be valuable to me in my future ministry now I am back at my own church. I would also like to thank everyone I met and worked with for making me feel so welcome and wanted! Norbury can offer everything an Anglican Church is and does, from traditional Book of Common Prayer services to informal, experimental and youth worship – and everything in between! I tasted as much of this feast as I had opportunity to do. I was able to worship at the majority of the services. I also took part in a fellowship group for bible study and joined in a homegroup. I went on home and hospital visiting, and I got the chance to preach and to lead worship myself – a bit of an ordeal, but a real privilege! It’s easy to count up the things I was able to take part in. But I was also given an experience that is impossible to measure, though unmistakeable when it happens to you. That is, the unique and powerful Christian fellowship that drives your church.	I got to know and became very attached to a lot of special and dedicated people - the Ministry Team, the Churchwardens, the children’s and youth leaders, the Music Group, the Vergers, the ‘meeters and greeters,’ and many others. Especially all those many folks in the congregation who were happy to share their time, their thoughts and their faith with me, over a brew after the services. I took away with me a sense of a very special worshipping community, one that tries to live a faith where everyone is accepted and valued, where differences are treated as an opportunity to learn rather than to judge, and where people share a Christian journey, heading to the same eternal destination by all kinds of individual routes. Whenever I think of Norbury now, a particular song runs through my head. The words, from Mission Praise 162, sum up for me what is so special and precious about what you have, and about the way you express your faith and your life as a church community. ‘This is our God, the Servant King, He calls us now to follow Him. To bring our lives as a daily offering Of worship to the Servant King.’ Thank you for your unfailing welcome, and for everything I’ve experienced and learned during my time with you. Keith Ravenscroft
	Norbury Parish Church, Hazel Grove, Stockport, Cheshire. Telephone: 0161-483 6325

Welcoming the Stranger

For six weeks in January and February I spent my placement for Reader training with you at Norbury. My purpose was to learn as much as I could about the life of your church, and to join in as much as I could with the host of things that go on in a big parish. Norbury is very different from my own smaller, more rural and rather more traditional home base.

My purpose in writing this is to let you know that, thanks to you, I learned an enormous amount that will be valuable to me in my future ministry now I am back at my own church. I would also like to thank everyone I met and worked with for making me feel so welcome and wanted!

Norbury can offer everything an Anglican Church is and does, from traditional Book of Common Prayer services to informal, experimental and youth worship – and everything in between! I tasted as much of this feast as I had opportunity to do. I was able to worship at the majority of the services. I also took part in a fellowship group for bible study and joined in a homegroup. I went on home and hospital visiting, and I got the chance to preach and to lead worship myself – a bit of an ordeal, but a real privilege!

It’s easy to count up the things I was able to take part in. But I was also given an experience that is impossible to measure, though unmistakeable when it happens to you. That is, the unique and powerful Christian fellowship that drives your church.

I got to know and became very attached to a lot of special and dedicated people - the Ministry Team, the Churchwardens, the children’s and youth leaders, the Music Group, the Vergers, the ‘meeters and greeters,’ and many others. Especially all those many folks in the congregation who were happy to share their time, their thoughts and their faith with me, over a brew after the services.

I took away with me a sense of a very special worshipping community, one that tries to live a faith where everyone is accepted and valued, where differences are treated as an opportunity to learn rather than to judge, and where people share a Christian journey, heading to the same eternal destination by all kinds of individual routes.

Whenever I think of Norbury now, a particular song runs through my head. The words, from Mission Praise 162, sum up for me what is so special and precious about what you have, and about the way you express your faith and your life as a church community.

‘This is our God, the Servant King,
He calls us now to follow Him.
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to the Servant King.’

Thank you for your unfailing welcome, and for everything I’ve experienced and learned during my time with you.

Keith Ravenscroft

Welcoming the Stranger

Norbury Parish Church, Hazel Grove, Stockport, Cheshire. Telephone: 0161-483 6325