Kings Norton Parish
Part of the Church of England
The Parish Church of St Nicolas, Kings Norton, incorporating Hawkesley Church LEP
The Parish Magazine : June 2025
From The Editor
You can, if you wish, buy a digital version of the Parish Magazine by clicking here. The printed edition is still available for £1.50 at the Parish Office and in St Nicolas' Church. We have no plans to phase it out. You can even have it delivered to your door. Click here to find out how.
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To whet your appetite, here are this month's Editorial and a glimpse of some of the articles which await you in the current issue. Older copies, published more than three months ago, are available free of charge here.
In our last issue, we said goodbye to The Revd David Booker. This month, we say a sort of farewell to another member of the Ministry Team, The Revd Mark Bennett (photo opposite), whose appointment as Area Dean of Kings Norton, Moseley and Shirley Deanery and Interim Minister of St Paul’s Balsall Heath was announced recently. He’s not going far away, which is why it’s only a sort of farewell; but we should nevertheless record our thanks for all that he has given to the parish in recent years. I have asked him to write something about his new role for the July magazine.
By the time that midsummer edition appears, we will be approaching another two significant milestones as our Rector, Larry Wright, reaches retirement (p.4) and priest-in-training, Imogen Smith, takes up her first curacy in Wolverhampton. As a reduced Kings Norton Ministry Team reorganises itself around these departures, other staff changes are likely; but the work of the parish will go on.
It will do so against the backdrop of some interesting developments in the life of the national church, and not just the Church of England. When the Bible Society published its research into church attendance among young people earlier this year, it caused quite a stir, not least because the findings were so unexpected. Intrigued? The article is on p.16.
Equally unforeseen was the recent discovery that the man who came up with the idea of the two-minute silence in 1918 started life at St Nicolas’, where his father was a churchwarden who had a particular interest in our bell tower. Read the full story on p.8.