The St George's Millennium Committee met last month to discuss some ideas to celebrate this great event in our parish. It will begin with the Midnight Mass of Christmass when we shall light a large candle to burn throughout the year and continue with a special service on New Year's Day at 12.noon.
Our main celebration will take place at Pentecost 2000 with the planting of two new yew trees in the churchyard and a flower festival. We had several more ideas and we shall work at these in the meantime and announce them as the time draws nearer. We would still welcome any other suggestions you may have, so get thinking! I hope we shall have a number of musical concerts in our church as we have had in 1998/99 and no doubt our Director of Music and the choir will have some splendid music for the various services during the year.
It would have been marvellous to mark this event (as Purbrook Parish have done) with the installation of a ring of bells, but it is quite impossible to do this in our bell tower because of its construction. We hope that it might be possible to obtain a digital recording system, but we have yet to hear this for ourselves in a church which has a system and decide on this. Many are the brides who have asked me for "the church bells" for their wedding at St George's, only to be told we have only one! This is a costly installation and if we do decide to have it, we shall ask for donations or memorial gifts when we do.
Later in the year 2000 the Deanery are planning an open air Eucharist with the Bishop of Portsmouth and a procession of witness. There will be a number of diocesan events and also ecumenical celebrations too, one to take place in Winchester Cathedral on January 2nd.
It is all getting quite exciting, but please remember that it is a celebration of the 2000th anniversary of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, not just a change in the date. Next month I shall set out a special millennium prayer composed by Veritas the Catholic organisation, not the "statement" to be used in the Greenwich Dome!
With my blessing and prayers.
Your priest and friend.
Fr Malcolm Ferrier
p.s. We are most grateful to Pat and John Gasser for the beautiful wrought iron screen enclosing the Memorial Garden at the rear of St George's in memory of the late Derrick Gasser (RIP).
It is a useful and beautiful addition to the church grounds.
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page last updated 1 MAY 1999