I am married to Jane and we have four grown up children, three of whom are married and the youngest in his second year at university. We have recently become grandparents with the birth of our first grandchild, Evie Grace, in November 2006.

Coming to Burnage has been something of a 'home-coming' as we previously lived in the area for 20 years. Our children all attended local schools and we also worshipped at St Margaret's for a time before I started my ordination training.

As a church we have a mission statement which clearly sums up what we are about:

Together we aim to:

Worship God
Proclaim Jesus
Grow in the Spirit and
Serve the world

In this year of 2007, our Vision is to be a Growing Church once more. Our motto for the year is taken from 1 Corinthians 3:5-6.

"We are simply God's servants . . . Each one of us does the work the Lord gave him to do . . . but it was God who made the plant grow."

Paul recognised that it is only God who can make a church grow, but we must be faithful in doing our part. We will be exploring this theme in our Sunday services as well as in our Home Groups and First Tuesday 'All Together Now' evenings when we come together for worship, Bible teaching and prayer.

We believe that prayer is foundational to our church life. There are at least three corporate prayer times each week in our Parish Centre: Monday at 7pm, Thursday at 7am and Friday at 12 noon.

Ian Thompson, Rector.