We are grateful to a number of grant giving bodies for their financial support of our appointment of a musical coordinator as part of our launch of a Church Choir Project.

Choir Church is a model for new worshipping communities, built around children’s choirs in schools, led in partnership with local churches. It offers worship, musical excellence, and spiritual formation designed to build and grow congregations, working for social justice. While it is principally school-based, its worship is open to the wider community of parents, teachers, neighbours and friends.

Choir Church has four elements:

  1. Local school Choir Church builds a new congregation around a children’s choir based in a school, which may or may not be a church school

  2. Eucharist A children’s choir sings in a Eucharist which is open to all – parents, teachers, and neighbours, including a ‘planting team’ of existing worshippers

  3. Choral excellence Children learn a wide range of liturgical music, with the English Choral Tradition at its heart, equipping them musically for worship and life

  4. Social justice The congregation is built and developed using the practices of community organising, so it can work with its neighbours to act on Jesus’ command to challenge injustice

 

GRANTS

We are grateful to the following Funds for their support:

FSJE: THE HOLY CHILDHOOD

The majority of the focus of the Trust is as a grant making body in works missionary and educational for the building of the Kingdom of Christ. We take as our guide and inspiration the many generations of service of the monks of SSJE, who worked throughout the UK and in Africa, India, the Americas and Japan.The Society of St John the Evangelist helped found and guide other Religious communities – among them The Sisterhood of the Holy Childhood. The Sisterhood was established in 1895 in a convent next to the SSJE Mission House in Cowley. It was a community for female qualified teachers who worked in many local elementary schools

THE LADY PEEL LEGACY TRUST

The Lady Peel Legacy Trust was established in 1925 for the honour of almighty God and the furtherance and support of Church of England work carried out on catholic lines.
The Trust says “Our aim is to encourage confidence and enthusiasm within the catholic tradition of the Church of England.”
CONFRATERNITY OF THE BLESSED SACARMENT
The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament (CBS) was founded in 1862, first of all men and women praying and working for a greater devotion to Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. Now there is “an increasing emphasis on mission in CBS’s work”.
DIOCESE OF BLACKBURN
We are grateful also for the support of the Diocesan authorities, who are coordinating a Choir Church scheme in over 20 parishes in the Diocese.

 

Following a recruitment process it is hoped to launch the scheme in 2023.