| THE LOCAL community was invited to coffee and doughnuts at St Michael’s, Preston, at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning. The recent removal of the pews meant that instead of the usual eucharist, chairs and tables had been arranged café-style, and 230 people came — at least 100 more than usual.
On the tables they found the means to make their own Christingles in the course of the service that followed, and then everyone was served with coffee and doughnuts. “It was a way of marking the end of Christmas, and to give newcomers a good experience of the church,” said the Team Rector, the Revd Rick Bunday. He tells me that about a dozen of those extra people have been back since.
St Michael’s (Blackburn diocese) is a lively “liberal Catholic” church in a Preston suburb that will be celebrating its centenary this year. The congregation has raised £50,000 towards the £200,000 redevelopment with a wine-tasting, Burns night, Victorian day, funfair, and “all sorts of ideas”.
The work is almost complete: the floor has been levelled, a stage built, a suite of lavatories installed, and the old vestry has become a conference room and seminar room. The church is to become a centre for the performing arts.
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