Pastoral Letter - June 2026 

While Jeremy Trew is on sabbatical our monthly Pastoral Letter is being written by other clergy in our Team.

From Rev’d Romey Poston 

Dear Friends,

You may notice something has changed as you come into St Mary’s this month.  The colours are all different: everything is dressed in green. Why? Because we’ve entered the season the church calls Trinity, a long season that will take us all through the summer months and well into autumn.

It has the colour green because it is the season of growth. Without the excitement of major festivals like Christmas and Easter, it’s the time of year when we can focus on growing as Christians, both individually and as a community. Perhaps it’s good that the season is so long because, let’s face it, growing in understanding of, let alone putting into practise, what Jesus teaches us isn’t easy; in fact, it’s a life-long task. As we try, we often slip up, as we say at confession “through weakness, through ignorance, through our own deliberate fault”. It ain’t easy.

So it’s really significant that the season bears the name ‘Trinity’ because our three- in-one and one-in-three persons God has a fundamental message for us which is at the very heart of our call as Christians. The Trinity tells us that our loving God, in his very self, in his very being, is a God of community, a God of relationship.

Theologians talk of the relationship of the Trinity as being like a dance, where each is sensitive to, accommodating, loving and supportive of the other. There’s no treading on toes in the dance of the Trinity. And the truly remarkable thing is that God longs for us to be a part of that relationship - he invites us in.

The truth is none of us can really grow in our faith on our own. We all need the loving, accommodating and supportive help of one another and to hear the wisdom of those who have gone before us. It’s no coincidence that the first disciples were a community. When they struggled to understand, when they made mistakes and tried to grow, they did so in community. We too become disciples of Christ in community.

We grow by worshipping together, by being generous to those around us, especially, as Jesus tells us, to those outside our church walls (even those we don’t much like the look of). We grow by how we welcome and look after the stranger. This month, however many years we have been a Christian, we can begin that journey of discipleship anew, and in the many weeks of the Trinity season ahead, we have a quiet and gentle time to reach out to one another, and together, to reach out to the stranger beyond these beautiful walls, slowly growing in, and living out, the faith Christ taught us.

Our God of relationship is longing for us to try.

Trinity blessings on you all,

Rev'd Romey