Our Minister, Rev’d Chris Pritchard, sends the following Message for the month of September 2018 ….
Dear Friends,
I thought that as I become the Methodist Minister at Castle Community Church I should take a moment to introduce myself. I know some of you know me quite well and have met me on a number of occasions, but others will have hardly seen me.
I am known by most people as Chris only my parents call me Christopher I was born in Alsager on September 19th 1966 so this September I shall be 52 years old. I went to school in Crewe before leaving home at the age of 19 when I moved to Sheffield. There I took a degree in Civil Engineering at Sheffield City Polytechnic. After college I worked for six years designing sewers for Rotherham Borough Council. During this time I trained as a local preacher and then in September 1995 I moved to Manchester to train for the ministry at Hartley Victoria College. My first six years as a minister were spent in the Rhyl and Prestatyn circuit. It was while I was in Rhyl that I met my wife Ruth who ran the youth club at one of the churches that I served. Ruth has two adult children John and Becki who currently live with us. From Rhyl we moved to the Wrexham circuit where I served for 8 years before moving here in 2012.
I have a couple of important hobbies with which I while away my spare time. I have had a season ticket for Stoke City FC since I was 9 years old and regularly attend matches. I am also a very keen bird watcher and on my days off I will probably be found with a pair of binoculars around my neck looking for interesting birds.
Over the next few weeks I look forward to getting to know you all better which will be a challenge. Most importantly of all I look forward to worshipping God with you and exploring what it means to call ourselves followers of Jesus Christ and particularly what it means to talk about following Jesus here in Castle? Perhaps then, in the words of Mother Theresa, we will do ‘something beautiful for God’.
Chris Pritchard