St Jeromes

I would love to say that the church is full of life and buzzing with prayer and worship but i feel that would be a bit of a lie. The church was established in 1913 in one of the most deprived areas of Manchester of its day. The Church was then the focal point with as many as 300 parishoners and up to 800 children using church and the hall across the way for sunday school, outings well i guess you can figure the rest. Over the years with the younger generation moving on to better areas and families rushing to escape the the general poor conditions of Beswick, the backbone of the church has deminished to a mere few of which some have lost the fighting spirit to keep the redundant churches commision off the doorstep, and now with a congregation of 12 we are managing to skim by with prayer rather than pounds. Our main aim for the use of the building would be to get young people really involved again and hopefully more so in the worship side. For the past 6 years we have run a youth club from there on a wednesday night, hense the name Wednesday club with some nights having as many as 40 children in, but thank God for a good team of devoted workers who's biggest payment has been a 10p mix up from the tuck shop. If any of you reading this know of the developments taking place around the Manchester Commonwealth stadium, you will understand when i say that the church is no longer part of their "stratagy". I feel that the council etc think that the church is too "old hat" and that we go around banging tambourines, but they fail to remember that it was the churches that led the way in community involvment and youth work when half the MP's were in nappies. Oh well, I think I have Waffled enough about the problems we face but there are so many possatives on the horizon that we are working towards that with God as our guide we shall never stray. Please go in peace through what ever you do in life and keep the faith real, a good friend taught me little saying to say to myself when faced with challenging situations and that is "WHAT WOULD JESUS DO" Love and Godbless.

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