Weekly Email: Trinity 11
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Dear friends,
I would like to announce today an exciting new project that will become the focus of our parish’s attention in the autumn. From All Saints’ Day 2025 until All Saints’ Day 2026 our parish will be organising the first stage of a major initiative to raise new funds to pay for our music programme and to re-endow and substantially expand the funds held by our parish’s Music and Choir Trust.
Our PCC has been planning this initiative for quite some months now. You may remember that one of the goals we set ourselves in our Mission Action Plan was to organise a significant music fundraising campaign. The time has now come for us to set that in motion and I am calling on all our parishioners and friends to help with this effort.
At this stage, I simply want to ask you to put in your diary a very important date: Saturday 1st November at 7.00 pm. We will be launching this fundraising campaign that night with a music concert offered by our choir at All Saints’ Church, and I hope you will all make a special effort to be there.
This will be a concert of sacred music including a number of substantial items which the choir often doesn’t have the opportunity to sing because of time or liturgical constraints. The programme will include Bairstow’s Blessed City, Heavenly Salem, Macdowell’s Annunciation, Macmillan’s A special Appeal, Finzi’s Lo the full and final sacrifice, Holst’s Nunc Dimittis, and Parry’s Songs of Farewell.
I want to thank our Director of Music, Associate Director of Music, and all the members of our choir from the bottom of my heart for the generosity they have shown in offering to play and sing for this concert gratis in order to help raise funds for our campaign.
Please put this date in your diary NOW. Tickets are £25 per head and all funds raised will go to our our Choir and Music Trust. You can book your tickets via the Eventbrite link here. It will be a splendid evening and we need as many people present as possible. Please bring your friends.
Let me explain more about the fundraising campaign we are planning and why it is so important.
Our total music budget each year is about £120,000. Our parish is lucky to have a special Choir and Music Trust Fund whose income can only be spent on the music. This was founded around thirty years ago and has done much to ensure that, in a period when many parishes have cut back their musical offering, All Saints’ has maintained a very substantial and ambitious programme.
We are essentially the only Anglo-Catholic church left in England that offers each Sunday High Mass and Evensong & Benediction with full professional choir.
Our Music Fund was endowed generously by former generations of worshippers. The problem is quite simply this. The Choir and Music Trust Fund’s annual income is struggling to keep up with the increasing costs of running a professional choir. Its current annual income is around £50-60,000 and now only manages to cover about half of our music expenditure. This means our PCC has to find £60,000 a year to pay for music, which an enormous – and increasingly unsustainable – proportion of our annual outgoings.
Increasing the endowment (and therefore income) of our Music Trust Fund will ensure two things: first, as the costs of professional music making rise, it will enable us to make sure the music programme we offer is preserved, strengthened, and maintained; second, it will release significant amounts of cash in our annual PCC budget for other purposes over the next decade, which will allow a range of new projects to get off the ground orientated towards further growth and development in our parish’s life.
Our aspiration is this: to have doubled the Music and Choir Trust Fund’s endowment by 2035. This means we are seeking to raise £2,000,000 over ten years. The first part of this campaign will be a year long focussed series of fundraising activities to raise awareness and to kick start these efforts. This initial period of fundraising will run from All Saints’ Day 2025 to All Saints’ Day 2026.
Over the next few weeks, we will be putting the finishing touches to next year’s programme of fundraising events, and full details will be published around All Saints’ Day. I will be writing to you all next week about ways in which you can help sponsor and support some of these events as we prepare to launch our campaign.
For the time being, please join me in praying for these efforts, that parishioners, friends, and benefactors will be prompted by God to generosity. I pray our whole parish might rejoice with ever deeper gratitude in the treasure which is our musical tradition, and do all we can to support and preserve it for future generations.
Fr Peter
Fr Alan leads our August Bible Study group which has been meeting each week on Wednesdays.
Bible Study – thank you Fr Alan!
The final session of our Wednesday night August Bible Study took place this week. We have been exploring St Luke’s Gospel this summer. Each session begins with Holy Hour at 5.30 pm, followed by Mass at 6.30 pm, and an hour or so of teaching from about 7.00 pm onwards.
The Bible Study has been very well attended and we have had to cap attendance to make things manageable.
Huge thanks go to Fr Alan for all the work he put into preparing the teaching. All those who have taken part are very grateful indeed for his wisdom, learning and insight.
This week’s August Bible Study group – we have spent the past three weeks studying Luke’s Gospel.
Biddy Baxter RIP
The funeral rites of Biddy Baxter will take place on Thursday 11th September 2025 with a High Mass of Requiem at 2.30 pm at All Saints’ Church. All are welcome to attend.
If you are unable to be present in person, Biddy’s funeral will be live-streamed here.
We were so pleased to be joined two weeks ago by several Chelsea Pensioners who took part in our Assumptiontide procession. Here they are with the Bishop of Fulham.
Fidelium: the Oxford Movement
Fidelium, a new network for young adults who worship in parishes across the Fulham jurisdiction, will be organising a teaching mini-series this Autumn on the Oxford Movement.
This mini-series will involve a lecture given by Fr Peter at All Saints’, Margaret Street on Thursday 11th September at 7.00 pm introducing the main ideas and figures of the Oxford movement and Catholic Revival.
There will then be a day trip to Oxford on Saturday 27th September led by Fr Peter to put some of the ideas discussed in the lecture in context. The day trip will involved a visit to Pusey House, a tour of Oriel College, a pub lunch, possible punting party and then Evensong at Christ Church Cathedral.
You can sign up for the trip to Oxford here. A full list of Fidelium’s forthcoming events can be found here.
We were pleased to be joined by Bishop Lindsay Urwin at our Assumptiontide Procession two weeks ago. He sat in choir and joined us for our parish party after the liturgy.
Advent retreat at Walsingham
The Advent Retreat takes place from Friday 5th December to Sunday 7th December 2025 at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.
All those who gather for the retreat go into silence on Friday evening after supper. Silence is then kept in the Shrine grounds through the whole of Saturday until after the Solemn Mass on Sunday morning which takes place at St Mary’s parish church.
The retreat this year will consist of four addresses spread over the time retreatants spend together. This year’s retreat conductor is Fr Chris Irvine. His talks will focus on three works of art featuring John the Baptist. It will be entitled, ‘Pointing the Way: John the Baptist and the priestly task.’
The cost of the retreat is £260. This covers the cost of a room with full board for two nights and a transfer from Kings Lynn to Walsingham. We will follow our usual routine of asking retreatants to buy their own train tickets. We will set off around midday on Friday 5th December and travel by train to Kings Lynn, returning to Kings Cross on Sunday evening around 7.00 pm.
You can sign up via the eventbrite link here. Nearer the time, our parish office will then be in touch with you asking you to settle the balance of what you owe.
Parishioners and visitors enjoy the parish party which took place after our Assumptiontide Procession of Our Lady two weeks ago.
Attendance last Sunday
Parishioners enjoy a time of discussion and discovery together as part of our August Bible Study programme.
For your prayers
The Friends of All Saints
31st – Friends of All Saints’ in need
1st – Carlos Remotti-Breton, Dr Steve Rice, John Rick, Fr Peter Roberts, Hilary Rodger
2nd – Greg Round, Jamie Rundle, Mary Sherred, James Shrimpton
3rd – Ingrid Slaughter, Naomi Slippe, Vaughan Snook, Harvey Solomon-Brady
4th – Jonathan Spelman, Richard and Louise Stallwood, Iain Stewart, Robert Stoltz, Madeleine Storer, Ian and Veronica Summers, Colin Symes, Ann Tacchi
5th – Sebastian Taite-Ellis, Michael Taylor, Kitty Thompson, Charles Thomson, Dr James Thomson, Jeremy Thorp, Jane Turner, The Rev’d Roger Turner, Dr Christine Vaughn Lillie
6th – Christopher Walsh, Philip Wayne, Fr Benjamin Weitzmann, Fr. Mats Wendt, Michael Westcott
The sick
Cherry Burroughs, Jean Castledine, David Craig, Fr Michael Gudgeon, Catherine Hobden, Fr Harry Hodgetts, David Lodge, Carol Lyman-Price, Amanda Oldman, James Rodger, Ingrid Slaughter, Juliet Windham
Recently departed
Biddy Baxter, Martyn Evans, Mark Everitt Pr, John Oliver Pr
Anniversaries of death
31st – Bryan O’Byrne, Peter Davidson, Patricia Williams
1st – Edward Ragoe, Vera Arde-Acquah
2nd – Sophie Garrett, Kathleen Heales, Betty Little
3rd – Francesca Morcom, Susan Mason
4th – Harold Matts
5th – Joanne, Guy & Alicia Wace
6th – Anne Adams, Sister Jean Margaret ASSP
Services this week
Saturday 30 August – Feria
12pm Low Mass
6.00 pm Confessions
6.30 pm Vigil Mass of Sunday
Sunday 31 August – TRINITY XI
8.30 am Low Mass
11 am High Mass
5.15 pm Low Mass
6.00 pm Solemn Evensong and Benediction
Monday 1 September – Feria
12 noon Low Mass
6.30 pm Low Mass
Tuesday 2 September – Feria
12 noon Low Mass
6.30 pm Low Mass
Wednesday 3 September – Pope St Gregory the Great
12 noon Low Mass
5.30 Holy Hour
6.30 pm Low Mass
Thursday 4 Septemebr – St Cuthbert
12 noon Low Mass
6.30 pm Low Mass
Friday 5 September – Feria
12 noon Low Mass
6.30 pm Low Mass
Saturday 6 September – Our Lady on Saturday
12pm Low Mass
6.00 pm Confessions
6.30 pm Vigil Mass of Sunday
Sunday 7 September – TRINITY XII
8.30 am Low Mass
11 am High Mass
5.15 pm Low Mass
6.00 pm Solemn Evensong and Benediction