Church birthday celebrations

Ceilidh 'Thank you' for support of members and friends

SOUTHLANDS celebrated its church anniversary over the weekend of November 6 and 7 with a birthday party and ceilidh on the Saturday and special services on the Sunday when the guest preacher was hymnwriter Brian Hoare, a former President of the Methodist Conference.

But even while the church was celebrating there was scaffolding around the outside of the Community Centre to enable urgent brickwork repairs to be carried out.

The problem is that after 123 years the red bricks in the art décor building have deteriorated. Many have become porous which could lead to pieces of brick shaling off in the winter frosts, constituting a danger for people passing below.

These were being replaced by new red bricks and the whole of the exterior of the Community Centre was being repointed.

Further work will have to be carried out on the exterior of the church next year, although the bricks in this area are not quite so bad.

Despite all this expense, the party, with dancing to The Bad Bargain Band, was free to church members and those connected with the various church groups as a way of saying “Thank you” to members and friends for their support over the past 12 months.

At the celebration services on the Sunday, Brian challenged us to think about The Church And Its Community in the morning and The Church And Its Lord in the evening when he asked us to imagine how things might be if Jesus was living in our street or even in our house.