At this time of year it has become traditional to ordain Priests and Deacons in the Church of England.
We also do ordinations at Michaelmas (and indeed can do them on any Ember Day, Holy Day or Sunday), but it is much more common at this time of year.
For those about to become a Deacon or a Priest it is a moment of intense personal reflection and questioning. It is a moment where God places a call on your life and sets you aside for a special and life long service.
That service can be hard, but for the most part it is service of joy, of love, of caring and of hope.
A Priest gets to be alongside you in life’s most challenging moments – but also in moments of great joy.
A Priest is the person who stands in the person of Christ at the altar and makes Jesus present in the bread and wine.
A Priest is the person who hears your confession. A Priest is the person who will never abandon you.
So this week I ask you to pray for Priests – especially those Priests of The Society – that we are made strong in the Holy Spirit, that we are made strong in Love and in Hope. That we are made strong to be out in the world proclaiming Christ’s name – no matter what is thrown at us.
Please pray for those being ordained this weekend, and pray for me – your Priest.
Please welcome Anthony Wang who is visiting us today (Sunday) as we search for our new Director of Music. Do have a chat with him and let him know what you’d like to hear, what excites you and what you think will help people come to know Jesus in Hayes.
Bric-a-brac is back! This Saturday (26th June) from 10am to 1pm come along and help set up, sell, or bring your items you think can raise money for the mission of St. Anselm.
As the church hall starts to be hired out we are going to need someone to give it (and the toilets & kitchen) a clean each week. It is paid work so let Fr. Matthew know if you know anyone who would like to do it.
The Rosary Mission in the parish will run from the 4th July to the 18th July (when the Bishop will join us).
Help fund an organist – please consider setting up regular giving with the Parish Giving Scheme. Call 0333 002 1271 with your bank details to hand and quote our Parish Code – 230 623 503 or visit our website stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/giving
Did you know that in the church calendar we only celebrate three birthdays?
Jesus (we all know that one), Mary (clearly a case of a bit of birthday bash) and… John the Baptist.
Jesus and Mary are obvious choices – but why on earth do we celebrate the birthday of St. John the Baptist? Surely it would make more sense to celebrate his death (as we do with the other saints?)
The reason is amazing – it’s because whilst he was in his mother’s womb he encountered Jesus.
The encounter with Jesus was so great that he leapt for joy, which must have come as quite a surprise for his mother!
In the catholic church we believe that in this moment – in this encounter – his original sin was washed away and that he came into this life without that stain.
This early encounter with Jesus had the same effect for him in the womb as baptism would have had after he was born. It wiped away his sin so that from the day of his birth until the day of his death he was united with God – he was – from the moment of his birth – holy.
What was that holiness? It was his ability and mission to point to Jesus in all things. He prepared for the coming of Jesus by retreating the desert and living on honey and locusts, he recognised Jesus in the flesh and baptised Him, he gave us one of the greatest sayings of all history… one of the greatest lessons in how to follow Jesus,
‘He must increase, I must decrease.’
He tells us, ‘Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!’.
So this week let’s think about how we can decrease so that He can increase.
Thank you to everyone who has signed up for the tea & coffee rota (Ruth) and the reading rota (Susan). There are still some places to fill so please do say hello and get signed up
The Rosary Mission in the parish will run from the 4th July to the 18th July (when the Bishop will join us). Planning is now well under way and if you have an idea of how you could contribute please speak to Fr. Matthew
There will be a sung mass on Thursday evening (no services in the morning) for the birthday of St. John the Baptist.
We welcome a new church into the church hall on Sunday afternoons as they seek Gods call in their lives. If you see them (2-4pm) please do say hello and wish them well.
Help fund an organist – please consider setting up regular giving with the Parish Giving Scheme. Call 0333 002 1271 with your bank details to hand and quote our Parish Code – 230 623 503 or visit our website stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/giving
This is a question that was familiar to the writer of the psalms and this week it has been at the forefront of several conversations with people as they have come to church following the news of the fatal stabbing in Blyth Road on Friday morning.
As the air ambulance flew low over the vicarage and landed in the Navnat Centre carpark behind us I knew that something was very badly wrong.
Violence has been simmering on the streets of Hayes for a few weeks. Last week we stopped a knife fight outside the church on Saturday evening and I asked you all to pray for peace and calm.
We plan to walk the streets and cover them in prayer over the two weeks of the Rosary Mission in July (4th-18th), we plan to hand people a rosary and give them an invite to come and find the peace that only Jesus can offer.
And it’s in this Peace that we discover the truth behind the question, ‘where is God?’
The truth is that His Peace is available to all, freely offered, but just like any gift it has to be freely received and accepted.
If that Peace is rejected – or worse – is not known about – then evil will dominate in that persons life.
It is our job as Christians in Hayes to ensure that EVERYONE knows about the Peace of Jesus Christ.
It is our job as Christians in Hayes to ensure that NOBDOY walks these streets alone, afraid and abandoned to evil because we have failed to let them know about Jesus.
So no, God has not abandoned us. His love is very real and very present – but just as with any gift it can be thrown aside and ignored. When that happens evil gets a foothold.
It’s time to stop that evil entering the world. To bring people to Jesus Christ and to His Peace and love.
Thank you very much to Fr. Yaro for covering the Mass last Thursday at very short notice.
The Rosary Mission in the parish will run from the 4th July to the 18th July (when the Bishop will join us). I would like to form a mission committee to plan our outreach for the summer. Our first meeting will be after Mass on the 13th June, please do let me know if you’d like to come.
Next week we celebrate Fathers Day with a special mass for those people in our lives who have offered examples of fatherly love and care.
Safeguarding training is being re-arranged and details will be available soon.
Help fund an organist – please consider setting up regular giving with the Parish Giving Scheme. Call 0333 002 1271 with your bank details to hand and quote our Parish Code – 230 623 503 or visit our website stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/giving
Our gathering in front of the Blessed Sacrament is no simple thing. Our bowing in front of the tabernacle where Christ rests is no simple formality. Our devotion to Jesus in the Sacrament is no simple prayer. It is the heart of our faith.
Jesus offered himself up for us and in His last supper he declared the bread to be His body and the wine to be His blood. No dissembling, no metaphor, no parable.
So on the feast of Corpus Christi we are invited to reflect on the amazing gift that Jesus has given us. It is a gift we have had since the very formation of the Church and a gift that gives us the strength we need to go out into the world and proclaim Him.
The Mass is the model of the perfect Christian life. It is a model we should follow to be more like Jesus in all we do.
We gather, we confess our sins, we glorify God, we read scripture together and study its impact on our lives, we pray, we offer our gifts, we share the Peace of Jesus, we receive Him in the Sacrament, we are sent out into the world.
Each one of these acts builds us up in Him, but above all we are built up to be SENT OUT.
We end our Mass with the words ‘Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord’.
This is no simple instruction but the greatest command that Jesus gave us. Go!
What do we do with that instruction? What do we do with this wonderful gift of Christ in the Sacrament?
Two extra services this week: Evening Prayer on Sunday 6th with Benediction and on Saturday 12th a special Mass for The Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Thank you very much for Fr. Angus for covering the Mass last Thursday. He is a dear friend of the parish and we are grateful for Christ’s ministry through him here.
The Rosary Mission in the parish will run from the 4th July to the 18th July (when the Bishop will join us). I would like to form a mission committee to plan our outreach for the summer. Our first meeting will be after Mass on the 13th June, please do let me know if you’d like to come.
Help fund an organist – please consider setting up regular giving with the Parish Giving Scheme. Call 0333 002 1271 with your bank details to hand and quote our Parish Code – 230 623 503 or visit our website stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/giving
Standing up for what is right is not always an easy thing. It is perhaps easy to say, but somewhat harder to do. Especially when standing up for what is right can cost you your life.
This is exactly what happened to St. Charles Lwanga and his Companions in Uganda in the late 19th Century.
The king of Uganda executed Christians ‘for praying from a book’. He killed an Anglican missionary for this simple thing and would carry out dreadful acts on those in his court.
St. Charles rebuked the king and refused to carry out the dreadful acts demanded of him and his fellow Christians. They were burned alive in a group after being subjected to horrendous torture.
Within a year of their deaths – and their example of defiance to evil – the number of those coming to Christ quadrupled.
Through their example young men and women of Uganda found the courage to say, ‘no, not in our name’.
St. Charles is now the patron saint of black African youth and his feast day is a public holiday in Uganda.
The reason this day resonates so strongly with me is that it reminds us so powerfully that the stories of the martyrs are not distant or unrelatable – they don’t exist in the distant past – no – the martyrs of our faith are still out in the world saying ‘No!’ to evil, saying ‘Not in my name!’ to the worst excesses of evil, they are still be persecuted for being Christian.
And so we must pray for them and for a world in which their heroic sacrifice is no longer needed.
Thank you very much to Ruth who has offered to run the tea & coffee rota for after church. Please speak to her if you can offer help.
I’m still keen to hear from anyone who would like to be part of the summer holiday Rosary Mission. If you’d like to know more please come and speak to me.
The church is looking absolutely wonderful, all down to the amazing efforts of a dedicated and small team – thank you all very much.
It’s half term (again!) so Fr. Matthew is away this week taking advantage of the more relaxed rules. There is Mass and Morning Prayer as usual on Thursday which will be covered by Fr. Angus, please make him welcome.
Help fund an organist – please consider setting up regular giving with the Parish Giving Scheme. Call 0333 002 1271 with your bank details to hand and quote our Parish Code – 230 623 503 or visit our website stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/giving
On Tuesday we celebrate an important date in the church calendar – The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church.
It’s a new memorial – it was only inserted into the calendar in 2018 (by Pope Francis), although the title is much older.
We call Our Lady mother of the Church because in the instant that Jesus said to John at the foot of the cross,
“‘Behold, your mother!’ and from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” (John 19:27)
Mary became our mother – not just in an individual way – but in the broader sense of caring for the whole body of Christ on earth.
We look to her because she gave brith to Jesus and for all those years attempted to understand how to relate to Jesus the man and Jesus our Lord.
Who better to help guide and steer the Church as we discern a path forward between a growing secular world and the divine glory of God our Father?
Our Lady helps us reach out to those who have fallen away from the church. St. Augustine referred to Mary as “‘the Mother of the members of Christ’ who co-operated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church.”
So, as we look to our parish and to those who once knew Jesus but have drifted away – let us ask Our Lady to pray for us – and them – and help them to find a way back home.
Tea & Coffee return from this Sunday! There’ll be cakes, fresh coffee from our wonderful new machine, lovely tea and great fellowship. We need to keep our social distancing in place and still be mindful of the rules – but it will be great to be able to share a cup of tea and a chat after church again. Do bring your cakes in on Sunday…
I’m still looking for a volunteer to run the tea & coffee rota. It just needs two people each week who will set it up and serve after church. It’s a wonderful way to offer your service in time to the church and to Jesus.
Summer Rosary Mission. We’ve raised over £800 via an internet appeal to fund our Mission this summer. If you’d like to be part of it – please speak to Fr. Matthew.
Thank you to everyone who turned out on Saturday to help with the bric-a-brac and cleaning!
Help fund an organist – please consider setting up regular giving with the Parish Giving Scheme. Call 0333 002 1271 with your bank details to hand and quote our Parish Code – 230 623 503 or visit our website stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/giving
St. Dunstan was a renowned and well loved Archbishop of Canterbury (which is why we remember his feast day here at St. Anselm).
He was so loved that for the better part of two centuries he was easily England’s favourite Saint – and between him and St. Edmund was a favourite to become the patron Saint of England.
In the end of course England chose St. George, which makes St. David the only native of the country for which he is the Patron Saint in the British Isles. Patrick was Welsh, Andrew was from Judea and George was Greek/Palestinian.
Dunstan was a monk (in Glastonbury), a writer and artist (he was particularly known for this), he was behind some pretty major reforms at Glastonbury and is often credited with the restoration of monastic life towards the end of the 10th Century when it had started to wane.
From there (where he became Abbot) he went on to be Bishop of Worcester and then London (two of the biggest Offices in the land).
Then in 960AD he went to Rome and was made Archbishop of Canterbury. He was an incredibly talented minister (both in faith and in politics). In fact, the coronation service that he wrote for the coronation of King Edgar in 973AD still forms the basis of our current coronation service.
He was also known for his amazing generosity. At one point on a journey to Rome his generosity was so great that nothing was left for him or his followers and retainers. There were many complaints among his retinue!
He has many examples for us to follow. Patience, love, a dedication to learning and to sharing that knowledge – but perhaps most importantly his excessive generosity.
Cleaning – again! We’ll be doing a deep clean on Saturday 22nd May at the same time as the bric-a-brac is running. Please come and lend a hand, even if it’s just for a short time.
Bric-a-brac is back! Saturday 22nd May 10am – 1pm, if you have items to sell please bring them on the morning. If you’re willing to run a tea/coffee/cake stall please contact Fr. Matthew.
Tea & Coffee return after services form Sunday 23rd May.
Susan is now organising the Sunday readings rota – please speak to her if you’d like to try reading at Sunday Mass.
Summer Rosary Mission. We’ve raised over £800 via an internet appeal to fund our Mission this summer. If you’d like to be part of it – please speak to Fr. Matthew.
Help fund an organist – please consider setting up regular giving with the Parish Giving Scheme. Call 0333 002 1271 with your bank details to hand and quote our Parish Code – 230 623 503 or visit our website stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/giving
40 Days after His Resurrection Jesus was taken up into heaven. During these 40 days – just as we have been living them – Jesus spoke to many people, sat and ate with them, prayed with them, talked with them.
We have celebrated these 40 days together and we continue to do so – just as the disciples did all those years ago.
Luke tells us that after Jesus was taken up into Heaven,
‘They worshiped him and went back into Jerusalem, filled with great joy, and spent all their time in the temple giving thanks to God.”
They were instructed to wait in Jerusalem until the coming of the Holy Spirit.
That happened not long after at the event we call Pentecost – we celebrate it in two weeks on Sunday 23rd – the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told the disciples that whilst John had baptised with water they were (not many days from now) about to be baptised with the Holy Spirit.
We are part of that event through our own baptisms and part of that command to the disciples to become witnesses for Jesus and all He had taught us – not just in Jerusalem and in the places that Jesus had taught – but ‘to the ends of the earth’.
There’s a lovely ending to the reading in Acts recording this event. The disciples are left staring at the sky after Jesus has ascended as two men in white ask them why they’re still looking – telling them Jesus will return. In other words, stop watching and go do what He told you!
The APCM is immediately after Mass today (Sunday 9th May). It will not be live-streamed so do come along in person.
Bric-a-brac is back! Saturday 22nd May 10am – 1pm, if you have items to sell please bring them on the morning. If you’re willing to run a tea/coffee/cake stall please contact Fr. Matthew.
Tea & Coffee return after services form Sunday 23rd May – please do contact Fr. Matthew if you would like to help serve / make the tea & coffee.
Don’t forget to consider setting up regular giving with the Parish Giving Scheme. Call 0333 002 1271 with your bank details to hand and quote our Parish Code – 230 623 503 or visit stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/giving
This summer the people of St. Anselm will be hitting the street of Hayes to give away over 1000 rosaries, how-to booklets and a personal invitation to come to the church and join our amazing family.
But 1000 rosaries and 1000 how-to booklets cost a lot of money to print so we’ve embarked on a GoFundMe project to raise the £750 needed ahead of the summer.
Will you help? Will you give so that we can invite someone to church this summer? Thank you for your support!
Over the last few months we’ve embarked on a comprehensive overhaul of the technology at St. Anselm. We’ve done this to enable live-streaming of all our services in as simple and streamlined way as possible.
There are three major strings to that work.
The Sound System
The Webcam
The WiFi
Whilst it’s perfectly possible to do these things without the others it really is best to do them together.
The Sound System
Our system is a wireless system that allows control from any network connected device. It’s the Soundcraft U16 which retails at about £380. The unit is installed in an out of the way place and has no controls on it. You connect and configure the sound system using a very simple web-interface. It’s very easy to control and importantly allows up to 4 outputs which can be configured in different ways to your PA system so that you can produce great sound for the webcam independently of the speakers in church. Our sound system produces audio for:
Speakers in church
Porch speaker
Outside speaker socket
Webcam
Each of these outputs can be independently controlled – allowing for great sound in all places.
We paid in the region of £1k for the install in terms of labour from a sound engineer. The cabling for the system cost about £750 (materials and labour).
We also replaced the speakers in church with new column speakers – these allowed louder playing of music (the previous speakers could not play music) and have hugely improved the quality of the sound when people are using a microphone. We bought HK Column Speakers (4) at just over £3k (expensive but very much worth the money – there are cheaper available) with about another £400 in attachments and wall mounts to match our existing speaker hangers. The amplifiers for those speakers (and the porch & external speakers) cost just over £900. (The porch speaker cost £31). We then placed all this in a steel rack which cost £187.
In total, with labour and other ancillary parts (cables etc) the total cost was £8400.
Day to day control is via a £100 Android Tablet which we put on the altar or the lectern. It’s very subtle and easy to use. You can use the system to play out hymns downloaded from A Church Near You and create playlists etc.
Webcam
We installed an AXIS Q605. Technically this is an external security camera and was all we could get at the height of the pandemic. Importantly it is PTZ (Pan Tilt Zoom) and has a 40x optical zoom – the optical bit is important – digital zoom will get progressively worse in terms of quality the further you zoom in – and with church buildings that’s less than great. One of the reasons our camera looks so good wherever you point it is because of that 40x optical zoom.
We paid just over £3k for the camera and this is broadly the price range for the top end AXIS PTZs. However, in many churches an AXIS V5925 is a good if not better solution. It has a 30x optical zoom and will work very well in the vast majority of contexts. That retails at just under £2k (you can pick them up for about £1.8k if you’re lucky). They have everything you need in terms of hardware and are easy to configure for sound etc. I have no hesitation in recommending it and have installed it at a friends church recently with great success.
I chose an AXIS camera because it is so simple to control from a tablet or phone – alongside our sound system. You can create preset positions so you can easily control the system yourself – or a non-tech volunteer can easily learn how to change camera positions. Our system is so fast that people genuinely believe we have multiple cameras in church when we only have one.
The AXIS cameras will also run a piece of software called CamStreamer. This software will stream the output of the cameras direct to multiple sources at the same time – directly from the camera itself – you don’t need a separate computer set up. You configure the day/time/duration of the streams and it does it all for you – no complex software, no remembering to turn things on – it all just works.
You don’t have to log onto anything to start it or do anything other than turn up at the service and point the camera in the right direction – that’s it. It’s super easy to use and has the lowest possible requirement for control during the service – this was important for us as during the week we have three services every day and I did not want people in church being distracted by me messing about with tech. At the same time I wanted people watching at home to have the best possible experience. This is the best balance of those things I’ve found.
CamStreamer has a 90 day free trial and then costs $299 for a full licence thereafter.
If you have a smaller church and you don’t need the ability to move your camera you can buy a very cheap AXIS camera like the P1375. That retails at about £650/700 and is more than capable. You can buy lenses for it if you need a long zoom or a very wide shot – they cost about £250 for a good one and is worth the investment. These cameras are even easier to manage than the PTZs because once configured it just does everything itself and you can forget about it.
Importantly these set ups are super simple and easy to use – I can control them myself from the lectern/altar or someone can control them from the congregation – all with a cheap Android tablet. It is also expandable. If we decide to add more cameras and go a bit more clever with the shots – this will seamlessly interact with multiple software and hardware systems like OBS.
WiFi
Because the sound system relies on a Wi-fi network to access it via a tablet or phone in church we invested in a simple and cheap solution that was also robust. We went with the new tp-link mesh system which is linked with the Omada system for control.
When the cabling went in for the sound system and camera we ran an extra CAT6 network cable to the webcam location in church which allows us to place a EAP620HD Power over Ethernet (PoE) Access Point right in the middle of church. We’ve supplemented that with smaller EAP235-Wall Access Points in the sacristy, organ loft and church hall. This gives us solid coverage at a reasonable price.
All these access points are wired back to an 8 port Gigabit rack mount switch with PoE (TL-SG1008MP).
Once installed we set up two networks using the Omada cloud system and apps – enabling both public and private use of the network for various functions (including our Raspberry PI controlled bell, but that’s another post!)
Costs for the WiFi
EAP620HD – £170
EAP235-Wall – £74 (x3)
8 Port Gigabit Switch (with PoE) – £92
Ethernet cables – c£20
Companies I would recommend
During this work I encountered companies I would work with again, and some I wouldn’t. Here are those I would.
As a warning… do not use the companies recommended by Parish Buying. Every single one massively over quoted me and were clearly taking advantage of us being a church and therefore not being technically minded.
I am very happy for you to get in touch and I will give your quote the once over to make sure you’re not being cheated.
