I trust you all had a joyous Christmas and were pleasantly not unpleased to celebrate the glory of the coming of our Lord? Perfectly represented by our hugely successful best value nativity experience. Who would not agree that this was not church spend well spent on key cultural thematics? And congratulations to St Snoot-the-Privileged School for producing what was, according to our local independent website – St Marvin’s 24/7(edited by Kevin Slocombe) – “a 5 star production”.
Now a new year is upon us. Not only a time to renew your stakeholder relationship with God but the time to address the deficit in the parish accounts. Mr Hughes from Birmingham, our parish administrator, will therefore be announcing a series of exciting efficiencies over the coming months. Many designed to support a necessary step change in the resilience of our faith.
I’m especially proud to announce the first of these efficiencies. As usual, during January I shall be flying out with my family for a month’s sabbatical of poolside prayer and reflection at my mentor, the Reverend Righteous Loon’s, Florida mansion. However, this year, we will close the church and hall for this period and parish stakeholders are invited to attend St Snoot-the-Privileged School’s Renaissance Chapel facility instead.
Our temporary home will be overseen by my assistant vicar, the Rev Tinkerbell who has a series of excellent sermons lined up on culture, media and the post-Jesus agenda and how this can save the poor and ignorant on a competitive market basis during times of austerity.
This temporary efficiency closure is a huge funding win-win for St Marvin’s. As Mr Launcelot from Rachman Estates and Development on the High Street has agreed to make use of the church and hall for the month in exchange for a market resilient rate payable to the St Marvin’s Miscellaneous Provisions (Property) Trust. Mr Launcelot intends to set up an all-through 24-hour one stop shop for migrant job seekers, which sounds like a very worthy and exciting project indeed.
Could parish stakeholders also please note that Mr Launcelot is undertaking some asbestos removal work from the church roof during this period and that, for your own safety, you should not visit or enter St Marvin’s without the correct health and safety authorisation from our Property Sub Committee. We don’t want to be personally liable for any appalling accidents or law suits do we? That’s what Mr Launcelot’s for!
Some of you have noticed that our new pay-as-you-go self service tea vending solution in the vestry is not currently in active mode. This is unfortunate but Mr Hughes assures me it will not significantly impact our projected savings estimate for the current Vernal Equinox timeframe. Especially, he says, if we factor in third quarter capital draw down benefits to the Church Creative Media Fund achieved by the church roof capital transformation pathfinder. I’m sure you’ll agree this is great news and a huge relief.
Mr Hughes tells me that our self-service tea vending partner, Agresso Refreshment World, have identified an unforeseen minor malfunction in a downstream software iteration as the best likely cause. Rest assured, we have already identified spend from the Parish Land Reserve Fund to procure a competitively costed consultant from London to framework the into revenue positive.
In the meantime I’d like to welcome Daisy May – a former pupil of the parish’s OFSTED rated ‘Adequate’ comprehensive school, the Dave Spart Academy – as interim apprentice tea lady. Daisy will be joining us from February on a new flexible nil time agreement arrangement. This not only benefits Daisy while she studies self-service catering on day-release at college but maintains any parish refreshment budget uplift within the recalibrated parish finance envelope. Another win-win.
Our former tea lady, 72 year old Mrs Smith, is unable to return – despite popular demand – as she is now enjoying a flexible retirement as a full time cleaner at the Dave Spart Academy. Those of you who have stupidly repeated Ms Townsend from the Dave Spart Academy’s concerns to me that Daisy’s employment arrangements are exploitative and that Mrs Smith should never have been made redundant lack accurate context. Mr Hughes says the arrangements are reasonable and Ms Townsend is mistaken (as usual) while her continual dissent during Parish meetings is a silly and unwelcome distraction as we work to finesse our new biblical accounting practices.
As my mentor, the Texan psychotic preacher and notorious anti-communist homophobe, the Pastor Righteous Loon often has to remind recalcitant members of his congregation: “And those that would dissent should heed that we, the meek, the wealthy and the best who are the rightful keepers of the Lord’s flame, maintain a lock-up full of semi automatics purely for self defence purposes”.
Happy New Year and God bless.