Within the Synod there are a number of local church groups designed to help one another in mission and care. St Andrew’s belongs to the URC Leeds Mission and Care Group.

URC Nationally
The national URC is guided by a biennial ‘General Assembly’ overseen by a ‘Moderator of General Assembly’, a post opened to lay or ordained people serving for a two year period. The national church work is supported by a Mission Council and dedicated staff at Church House in London. With a focus on Christian mission the URC has adopted the ‘five marks of mission’ as its focus:

Mark 1: To proclaim the good news of the Kingdom
Mark 2: To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
Mark 3: To respond to human need by loving service
Mark 4: To seek to transform unjust structures of society
Mark 5: To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation; to sustain and renew the life of the earth.

In addition to the national website the URC communicates through the monthly denominational magazine ‘Reform’.

Local Ecumenical Partnerships
The United Reformed Church is committed to ecumenism, seeking the visible unity of the church, and to date has formed organic unions between 4 formerly separate denominations. This quest for unity is also a mark of local church life, reflecting the understanding that:

For we are strangers no longer But pilgrims together on the way to your Kingdom (from Swanwick Declaration 1987)

In Roundhay St Andrew’s has a ‘covenant’, a formal understanding of mutual work and witness with Lidgett Park Methodist Church and St Edmund’s Parish Church.  We share evening worship monthly and on other special occasions and undertake a number of joint activities, some with a spiritual dimension such as ‘lent reflections’ and some with a community focus, such as the 2006 Roundhay Environmental Festival.

Recycled Cow

St Andrew’s is also a member of Churches Together in Roundhay (CTR), a grouping which in addition to Lidgett Park and ‘St Ed’s’ also includes the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church, Street Lane Society of Friends and the Church of All Nations meeting at Talbot School. CTR also seeks to foster good relations and promote mutual work and witness.

Overseas Partners
Beginning in the 1960s and out of a friendship between the then Congregational Church and the Church of the Palatinate in Germany that sought to promote reconciliation post-war, St Andrew’s formed a partnership with the Lutherkirche in Frankenthal, former West Germany, a partnership developed through a series of regular exchanges. From reconciliation, new understandings and deep friendships developed. In the 1990s the Martinskirche in Bernburg, former East Germany, which had an existing link with the Lutherkirche, formally joined the partnership.

The partnership continues with a biennial exchange as well as a variety of informal visits, contact through letters, magazines and emails and support through prayer.

Martinskirche, Bernburg (named after Martin Luther)

Support across the Seas
St Andrew’s is committed to share the love of God, not just locally but internationally and seeks to follow the calling of Jesus to offer good news to the poor. One focus of this is an annual ‘financial appeal’ for others, the proceeds of which are distributed between three overseas organisations promoting development work. St Andrew’s has close links with each charity, with church members involved in different ways, which gives us an insight into the needs and work as well as confidence that our gifts are used very well.

Sylvia Wright Trust (www.sylviawright.org)
Back in the 1970s Leeds nurse felt a calling to ‘sell up’, ‘up-sticks’ and move to India to serve the people of the Tiruvannamalai region. From humble beginnings with few resources Sylvia has worked, supported by a Leeds-based management and fundraising Board, to develop what is now a significant hospital and education facility:

• Hospital with 250 beds for in-patients
• Outpatient clinics treating 7,000 patients every month
• A support scheme for 70 handicapped children
• A residential school for 230 profoundly deaf children & vocational training centre
• A vocational training centre for deaf school leavers

St Andrew’s supports the trust though our annual appeal and is the Trust’s largest single church donor. The Sylvia Wright Board includes two St Andrew’s members.

Sylvia Wright Trust

Sylvia Wright Trust Boarding School for deaf children

Sylvia Wright OBE

Kenyan Orphanage Sponsorship Trust (KOST - www.kost.org.uk)
The Kenyan Orphan Sponsorship Trust (KOST) is a small, Leeds based charity supporting orphaned and abandoned children in Kenya. The charity was established in 1995 by the Reverend Mabel Parris and now operates two centres in Nyanza Province, Western Kenya caring for a total of some 120 children. A Medical Centre is also sponsored to help care for their wellbeing.

Many of the orphans have lost parents to HIV/AIDS which continues to devastate the young adult community across many parts of Africa.The contribution of St Andrew’s makes a real difference to the work that can be done. KOST has a Leeds based Board whose Chair is also a member of St Andrew’s.

Trustee Gill Waterhouse with some KOST children


Sewing lessons


The KOST school room

Commitment for Life (www.cforl.co.uk)
The United Reformed Church launched the national Commitment for Life Programme to:

• Campaign for a fairer world
• Work for Peace with Justice
• Seek to be God’s people
• Announce Good News to the poor
• Recogise that change starts with us

Cfl Works through partner organisations in four countries:

Zimbabwe
Palestine
Jamaica
Bangladesh

St Andrew’s has Palestine as our prayer partner.

Our Appeal
St Andrew’s launches its annual appeal for others each year in November and the appeal remains open until Christmas Day. Gift envelopes are issued to members, friends and all associated through the uniformed organisations. These include a ‘Gift Aid’ facility enabling the Church to reclaim tax so enhancing the appeal total. All loose cash donations to church through Advent to Christmas Day are also given to the Appeal. In 2008 St Andrew’s will distribute the proceeds of the Appeal: Sylvia Wright Trust 45%, Commitment for Life, 30%, KOST 25%

Music
see music section