St Annes

Our May Wonderful Walk was led by Lily and Hilary for the first time!  We enjoyed a companiable, reflective and sunny walks, with meditation, singing, poems and some stretching!  We spent time looking upwards as the church has just marked Ascension Day.

While we have begun to miss Rev’d Sharon already, thank you to Lily and Hilary for leading our walk this month.

The next Wonderful Walk is on Sunday 21st June, 9.30am, meeting by the main gate of Western Park.

Messy Church enjoyed learning about the Last Supper yesterday (Saturday 16 May) through crafts, song, science experiments, bubble prayers and sharing in bread and wine (squash) during the celebration. Rev’d Liz even wore her special clothes (vestments) to show us what happens in church on a Sunday.

We also enjoyed eating Rev’d Liz’s home made bread during our meal together.

Messy Church meets next on Saturday 20th June, 4-6pm, when we will be marking Father’s Day.

Thank you and Goodbye to Rev’d Sharon Plant!

Today (Sunday 10 May) we gave thanks for Rev’d Sharon’s ministry over the last four years and prayed for Sharon and her family as they prepare to move to Norfolk.

Sharon led her final service at St Anne’s and Rev’d Liz got the children to help her make compost (cardboard, grass, vegi peeling and worms) as she shared some things about compost heap theology that Sharon had taught her.

At the end of the service we gave Sharon gifts, including a home communion set, a beautiful climbing rose and lots of jams and chutneys.

Sharon’s licensing service will be on 17 June in Wells by the Sea.

Congratulations to David and Angela who were married today at Town Hall Square and came to St Anne’s Church this evening (Saturday 9 May) for their Wedding Blessing.

It was a privilege to pray for God’s blessing on Angela and David on their special day, as they reaffirmed their vows and exchanged their rings (again!).

The church families of

St Anne’s and St Paul’s with St Augustine’s, Leicester

are delighted to invite you to a celebration and final service for

Rev’d Sharon Plant

as she completes her Pioneer Curacy with us and prepares to begin her new role as the Rector of  the Benefice of Holkham, Diocese of Norwich

Sunday 10 May 2026, at 9.30am, St Anne’s Church

Tea, Coffee and Cake will be shared in the hall after the service

At St Anne’s Church we launched SoulSpace two months ago, as we had been asked to provide a quiet, reflective space for those of faith or no faith to just come and be.

In our first two SoulSpaces Rev’d Sharon P and Reader Denis helped us to explore ‘Springtime’ and ‘Journeying’.  This month Rev’d Liz will be encouraging us to ‘lift up our eyes’.

Each SoulSpace will be a bit different, depending on who is leading it, and we love to receive your feedback on what works and what does not work, so that we can make sure SoulSpace works for everyone.

The next SoulSpace is Sunday 10 May, 6pm, in St Anne’s Church

This morning (Sunday 3 May) the intrepid Wonderful Walkers gathered in Western Park at 5am for a Dawn Chorus Walk!

International Dawn Chorus Day encourages us to get up before dawn to listen symphony of song performed by birds looking for love, and to defend their patch. As Christians we also believe that all creation worships God, so we enjoyed being part of natures worship this morning.

The bird song we heard included bluetits, song thrush, robin, blackbird, wood pigeon, black cap, chaffinch, chiff chaff, crows and magpie.  We also heard a woodpecker, doing just that, pecking on wood.

#DawnChorusClub

Our next Wonderful Walk is on Sunday 17 May, 9.30am meeting at the main gate, Western Park.

Rev’d Liz Wilson has recorded a podcast!

Rev’d Liz was a guest in the Methodist Church’s ‘Politics in the Pulpit’ podcast, organised by their Joint Public Issues Team. This is a lectionary based preaching resource, designed to ask the provocative question of how politics could appear in our preaching each week.

During the podcast, Rev’d Liz spoke with Thomas (from the Methodist Church) and Roo from the (United Reform Church) on the Lectionary readings for Sunday 26th April 2026.

If you would like to listen to the podcast you can find it here – https://open.spotify.com/show/3H8jaxOmFHvf3if7q8dYkm?si=OTo_Ju8ATeGPGXYP7GFo6Q

To read Rev’d Liz’s sermon inspired by participating in the podcast, go to our sermon archive.

In our April Messy Church we explored some of Jesus’ miracles, including his biggest miracle of all.  Coming back to life again on Easter Morning!

We learned about Jesus’ healing miracles and how his first ever miracle was turning water into wine (we made juice instead!).

This was also our last Messy Church with Rev’ Sharon, so we all signed a card, which we gave to her during our celebration in Church.

Next month we are going to be learning all about the Bread and Wine we use during the special service of Holy Communion.

Rev’d Sharon Plant has a new job!

Bishop Martyn has recently announced that our curate Rev’d Sharon has been appointed as the Rector of the Benefice of Holkham in the Diocese of Norfolk.

We are really delighted that Rev’d Sharon has successfully completed both parts of her Curacy training (to become an Incumbent and Ordained Pioneer Minister) and discerned God’s calling to these five small churches on the north Norfolk Coast.  Although we are also a bit sad, as we are going to miss Rev’d Sharon’s ministry among us.

Rev’d Sharon’s last service will be on Sunday 10th May, 9.30am at St Anne’s Church and she will be licensed to her new Benefice on Wednesday 17th June at 7pm.

We will be praying for Rev’d Sharon and her family at this time of endings, beginnings and moving house.

During our February Messy Church we explored how often the number 40 appears in the bible (its a lot!), as we were marking the beginning of the 40 days of Lent (47 days, if you include Sundays).

As part of our worship together we made Lent calendars and learned about how Christian’s mark their foreheads with ash at the beginning of Lent.

Thank you Sahra for making Messy Church lots of fun as we learn about Jesus together.

On Sunday 15 February we celebrated Margaret Gillespie’s retirement from 30 years of Reader Ministry, reflecting on how Jesus’ transfiguration (the reading for the day) at the top of the mountain was an opportunity to look back over the highs and lows of her ministry. Giving thanks to God for how he had worked through Margaret serving our Benefice and to pray for Margaret as she enjoys worshiping with us ‘from the pews’.

During the service we prayed for Margaret, gave her gifts including flowers and a card, and celebrated after the service with coffee and cake.

Thank you Margaret for all your years of dedication to St Anne’s Church.

At Messy Church this month (January) we learned about the story of the Tower of Babel and how God gave us different languages, to encourage us to work together.  We built towers, saw how high we could jump, made Mehndi hands, explored our bible reading in Spanish and discovered that Messy Church speaks lots of different languages including Polish, Portuguese, Gudurati, Hindi, English and even a little bit of Latin!

Thank you to everyone who came to Messy Church this month, including welcoming some new families.

Christmas would not be Christmas without St Anne’s traditional and raucous Crib Service on Christmas Eve.  This year we learned about the birth of Jesus from the point of view of the Angels, who thought they knew everything about God, but discovered they had lots to learn.  Each child on their arrival was presented with a bag of goodies to help them worship though the service, with questions, candles, streamers, bells, stars, hearts and even chocolate coins to make the service as active as possible.

Thank you to Sheila for being Angel Gabriel, for John who wrote our script and everyone who dressed as a character from the Christmas Story to participate in our nativity scene, gathering around baby Jesus’ crib.

We had a wonderful night at our traditional Nine Lessons and Carols service, surrounded by candles, led by the St Anne’s and Tudor Choirs, with the lessons read by friends and family of St Anne’s Church, representing our diverse and inclusive church community. Thank you to everyone who came, sang and read at a beautiful evening of worship as we retold the story of Jesus, God with Us.

We had fun at our Christmas Messy Church on saturday 20 December – making our own Christmas Party food, while exploring the Christmas Story.  We made sandwiches to take on our journey with Mary and Joseph and Cheesy Stars to remind us of how the Wise Men learned about Jesus.  We also created sheep biscuits (decorated with bananas to represent the wool) and marshmallow angels as we learned about how the shepherds visited Jesus in the stable.  In church Rev’d Liz helped us to understand that in Jesus, God is always with us. Afterwards we each had the opportunity to visit St Nic himself, in Santa’s grotto.

Thank you to all who came and helped make our Christmas Messy Church a memorable experience!

Friends from St Anne’s and our sister Church St Paul with St Augustine’s Church had a wonderful evening at the Crows Nest pub last night (16 December) for Sing Christmas.  We sang carols, shared some of the stories about Christmas from the bible and enjoyed the wonderful hospitality of the Crows Nest team.

We had some extra special visitors with food donations for the Food Bank yesterday (12 December) at St Anne’s Hall. Our PCSO Sally Morgan, brought several colleagues with her to drop off their gift.  Later in the morning, we took the food gift from the local police station, with those generously donated by the community of Western Park to the Food Bank in Braunston Frith where they will be shared with families in need over the Christmas season.  Thank you to all our volunteers who help with the weekly Friday ‘drop off’ in the Hall and the weekly delivery to the Food Bank.

On Tuesday afternoon (9th December) the Mothers Union gathered to celebrate Christmas.  Following some Christmassy poems, we welcomed Paulette as our newest member.  Then we retold the Christmas story using nativity sets we brought in from home, singing carols, and remembering what God has done for us, through the birth of Jesus.  Thank you to Margaret and Sheila, our Co-Chairs and the entire MU committee for leading us through another year of MU meetings, events and fundraising activities.

The Wonderful Walkers and Allotmenteers came together with friends from St Anne’s Church yesterday (Sunday 7 December) to enjoy wreath making.  Using greenery gathered from peoples gardens, dried fruit, spices and ribbons each individual and family went home with a unique display to adorn their front door. Thank you to Rev’d Sharon Plant and friends from the Wonderful Walks and Allotment for making such a special afternoon.  It was great to do something creative in the midst of a busy season of preparation.