Visit to St Mary's Bramall Lane Church Centre

Today I went to see Graham Duncan who is the Centre Manager of St Mary's. He has been a great help and inspiration to us at through our re-development project at St Paul's, and has preached and led services for us in his role as a non-stipendiary priest (and is coming on 22nd June).

In the eight years of its existence, St Mary's Centre has grown to a large enterprise with a staff of thirty people. When I arrived I could see that the building was full with conferences and within a few minutes someone arrived to arrange another booking! It was wonderful to see so many people coming in and out of the building and clearly appreciating it so much.

Graham says that the staff have a real sense of doing their work for the good of the church - knowing that profits from the centre are used to do important work in the community.

It does mean that everything has to be done on a very professional basis because the building is competing with other commercial venues. This means that homemade displays, such as might be created by Sunday School children, just cannot stay around - it would give the wrong impression to conference delegates who attend through the week.

Inevitably there are tensions between the needs of the church congregation and of the centre users and these have to be carefully worked out. The centre staff deal with all the cleaning and maintenance and the redevelopment has provided a light, up to date and inspiring place for worship with excellent facilities, but it is easy to get used to all of this!

Most people recognize that the centre gives the church great publicity, both locally and across the city. It is so important that St Mary's is there, doing what is does and that it has a thriving congregation at its heart. But this does not mean that the people who work in and use the building are necessarily drawn to worship there.

At St Paul's we have had to work very hard in our first two years to get things up and running. Graham spoke encouragingly about our progress, recognizing the competitive market we are in.

We are different from St Mary's and will develop in different ways. Our emphasis is more local and we do not have the same connections with the city centre, though some people do travel significant distances to use our facilities.

It seems to me that we will have to keep thinking about our vision as the work develops. I am sure we can make a success of running St Paul's Centre, and that we will find the income needed to maintain and develop our facilities.

The opportunities for change are not huge - we are limited to certain sorts of activities and lettings - but we can still give direction to what we do. I come back to the question we have been grappling with for so many months: 'what is God calling us to do - as individuals and as a church?'. We will have to return to this time and again but I feel sure that, as we do so, the vision will become clearer and we will sense more of the path which God is leading us along.

St Paul's Centre is no magic answer to our needs as a congregation, but it has provided us with brilliant facilities which we can share with our community and place to meet people and convey our faith. Opportunities are there, but we need vision both to use them to the full and to give direction to all that happens in our building.