St Matthew’s Church

Big Welcome Project

Our Big Welcome Project is underway. The pews at the back of church have been removed and a wooden floor laid down. This has given us the space we need for our church to be a welcoming place for the whole community.

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COVID19 Update

As you will be aware, most legal restrictions brought in to limit the spread of COVID19 have now been lifted. All of the advice from Government and the Church of England, however, is to proceed with care and caution. For our church services, it is no longer necessary to book a place in advance. We will, however, continue to record contact details for test and trace purposes. Good hygiene practices, including hand sanitising, wearing of face coverings, and maintaining distance from others, while no longer mandatory, remain strongly recommended. Congregational hymn singing is now allowed in services: we are asking people to remain seated for hymns and to sing with faces covered, at reduced volume, to limit the spread of aerosols. The administration of communion (wafer only) will continue in the same way as we have been doing it for some time

Vocation, Vocation, Vocation

On 29 June 1986, I was ordained Deacon in the Church of England in Dorchester Abbey. (That’s Dorchester-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, by the way, not the one in Dorset). That means I have now marked the 35th anniversary of my ordination as a deacon.
While I was writing this piece, I decided to check up on the bishop who ordained me a deacon. His name was Conrad Meyer, and as Bishop of Dorchester, he was an area bishop in the Diocese of Oxford. He wasn’t someone I got to know, as my curacy was in Aylesbury, where we came under the Bishop of Buckingham. (Oxford Diocese also has a bishop of Reading. The three area bishops support the Bishop of Oxford.)
In the years between ordaining me (which I was sure was a highlight of his episcopal ministry!) and now, what became of Bishop Conrad?