Breakfast events @ St John's

John Pantry

Lydia Gladwin with her husband John, the Bishop of Chelmsford

We have two breakfast events planned for consecutive Saturdays in November at St John's Seven Kings. The events are:

• Ladies Breakfast - Saturday 8th November, 8.30am - 10.00am. Tickets - £3.00 (from the Church Office, 020 8598 1536). A buffet breakfast with guest speaker Lydia Gladwin (wife of the Bishop of Chelmsford) sharing her experiences of working with prisoner's families in a talk entitled 'Who serves the sentence?' MUDPIES is the acronym for Chelmsford Mothers' Union & Diocese Prison Initiatives. The project operates in the two prisons in the diocese - Bullwood Hall (184 prisoners) and Chelmsford, a Category B local prison and young offender institution (575). Lydia Gladwin says: "The needs which the projects seek to meet are a welcome to families and provision for children in the visits' halls. Before we launched MUDPIES there was little provision in the visits' halls, no toys and no play areas." As a result, MUDPIES launched five initiatives: Support for the needs of the children and the partners of prisoners; Providing supervised recreational facilities for them within the prisons; Involvement in support of pastoral work of Chaplaincy such as asylum seekers; A homework club for children with their fathers (Chelmsford); and Special children's visits (Bullwood Hall). More information on MUDPIES can be found at http://www.chelmsford.anglican.org/980.html

• Men's Breakfast - Saturday 15th November, 8.30am - 10.00am. A cooked breakfast with guest speaker John Pantry (Premier Radio presenter). John trained as a recording engineer and worked for some years in the music business, contributing to many hit records for various artists. He also met with some success as a songwriter and in one memorable month there were six singles by different secular artists released, all singing his songs. He appeared with Kenny Everett on Radio 1, worked on the early Bee Gees albums as well as time spent with the Stones, the Kinks, the Small Faces, the Who and many others. Following his conversion to Christianity his first Christian production was "Light Up The Fire" which made it to the UK charts. He spent a year working for Maranatha Music in California and on his return to Britain began touring internationally as a singer and speaker releasing a dozen Christian albums. In 1989 he was accepted by the Anglican Church for ordination and after training at Oak Hill College, was ordained in 1993. In 1995 he joined the work at Premier Radio. He is a non-stipendiary Curate and is currently writing a new musical setting for a communion service. Donations will be requested towards the cost of the meal and speaker's expenses. More information on John Pantry and Premier Radio can be found at http://www.premierradio.org.uk/presenters/johnpantry.aspx.
  

We are excited to be welcoming such interesting speakers to these breakfast events at St John's. These popular events provide good food and conversation combined with stimulating presentations. There is an open invitation to those from other churches and the wider community who would like to come to hear our speaker's stories of how Christian faith engages with real life in the very different worlds of prisons and the entertainment industry.

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Creed - My Own Prison.