Lower Withington Methodist Church

Lower Withington
News Articles

 Our Church was decorated with lots of home grown fruit, vegetables and many lovely flower arrangements.  We welcomed back Rev Graham Wassall to our morning service and our own Rev Nic Langton-Miller for our evening service.  In the morning the choir sang "Harvest Samba" and our toddlers and young people brought in cabbages & broccoli, it was lovely to see our Church full.  Monday evening we had our annual auction of produce and raised money for our Church and the charity Farms for City Children.

Our successful village Carol Service this year again including our choir singing as well as the band.  A packed village hall with our community coming together enjoyed singing carols and socialising with mince pies.  

Our candlelight Carol Service was another huge success and our choir sang a number of songs.  We were all a little bit cautious with candles following our fire!

The band went around the village playing carols and collecting money for the Church and The Christie Hospital on the Monday before Christmas and Christmas Eve.  Having a number of locations to play at again this year gave good opportunity for our community to come together again to celebrate Christmas.  

Friday 16th September 2022 we were all due to be getting ready for our Auction of Promises to raise money for our Church and The Christie Hospital.  When our Church coffee lounge and Sunday School room set on fire from a neighbouring property at lunch time.  Luckily a number of people including one of our members had spotted the fire early and seven fire engines were dispatched from neighbouring towns.  The main fire damage was to the fire escape at the back, which has since been removed.  A team of specialist cleaners were dispatched to get the main Church ready for our Harvest service 3 weeks later.  

We continued with our charity auction event on the Saturday evening and raised lots of money for our Church and The Christie Hospital.

Queen's Platinum Jubilee Beacon Lighting

As part of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Beacon Lighting, Lower Withington Methodist Church had a Bonfire Beacon on Thursday 2nd June 2022 at 9:45pm. The Choir and Brass Band performed together for the first time after signing up to sing the specially written Commonwealth Song “A Life Lived with Grace”.

This has allowed Lower Withington Methodist Church to continue with the tradition of singers being accompanied with musical instruments. This dates back to 1856 (1870 in most 20th century reports), where at a Methodist missionary meeting in 1870 there was an appeal made for money. In response to this, several young men agreed to go around the villages carol singing over Christmas, as the years went by musical instruments were introduced to lead the singing raising money for the Methodist Missionary Society. Today the Brass Band continues this tradition of playing carols around the village at Christmas and so it was really special to join with the choir at this special event to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

You can hear and watch our Bonfire Beacon via the Commonwealth Resound YouTube channel by clicking on the link below:

https://youtu.be/Ml_YEHDmQv0

This year it was good to be able to enjoy our Village Carol Service again, it was still a little different with the wearing of masks, but we still enjoyed  singing and listening to the Band and our new Choir.  

We also held our first Walking Nativity, the Band joined us as we set off from the Village Hall through to the Church collecting the Nativity Characters on the way.

The Carol by Candlelight service was enjoyed by all who attended and we enjoyed the three pieces that the Choir sang.

The Brass Band continued the tradition of playing carols at Christmas although instead of playing around our village at each house, we arranged to play in a number of different locations.  This was very successful playing at the end of Boundary Lane, Windy Arbour crossroads, the Village Green, Bidlea Dairy and the Black Swan.

There was a good turn out at the joint Service held with St Peter's Church in September to commemorate 100 years since the Calvary War Memorial was dedicated.  The hymns accompanied by the Band were the same hymns that were sung 100 years ago, various wreaths were laid in memory of all those named on the memorial. 

This year we were able to decorate our Church for Harvest again and to celebrate we opened our doors on the Saturday.  We served tea and cakes and raised money along with our Harvest Sale to support the new Christie at Macclesfield Hospital.  

In 2021 we still couldn't enjoy our Easter Services inside, so some of the ladies created a lovely cross full of daffodils that we displayed outside the Church.  We then held an outdoor service to celebrate Easter and the sun shone down on us as we sang our Easter Hymns accompanied by the organ from pre recorded music.

A Carol Service with no singing didn't quite feel right after the year we have had.  So we decided to have an outdoor carol service with the band playing a few carols.  We started with a short service inside the Church and then we all stood by or inside our cars and the band played a number of carols.  It was another outdoor lovely fellowship and the band enjoyed the first time of playing since Christmas last year.

This year our harvest service had to be different as a result of COVID 19, therefore, we enjoyed fellowship with each other at an outdoor service in our car park. 

Instead of singing as a congregation, we enjoyed listening to ourselves singing the usual harvest hymns accompanied by our organist from the service two years ago. 

Our Church is normally decorated with lovely Harvest displays within the Church, but unfortunately this couldn't happen this year.  This however, didn't stop us and so some bales of straw were placed in front of the Church and a few ladies created a wonderful display of vegetables and flowers to brighten up the front of the Church.  Then instead of us having our annual auction of produce from within the Church raising money for a local charity we decided this year to support the local food bank at New Life Church.