Our Church School

St. Michael’s Church

There is long-valued relationship between St Michael’s School and the Church next door. St Michael’s Church was involved in the founding of our school so our partnership goes back to the very beginning of the school’s life and reflects our shared desire to serve the people of our community – children and grown ups together.

St Michael’s Church shares the school’s priorities in wanting to see every child and family in this area flourish and grow and we have four main commitments in doing that:

The first is prayer. We have been the Church of England parish church for the Soho Hill area since 1855, keeping faith in Handsworth for 170 years; gathering to pray; celebrating mass and sharing communion; baptising children and adults alike; proclaiming, discussing and exploring the way of love that Jesus taught and lived; bringing our hopes and questions to the pages of the Bible, and praying day by day. St Michael’s church exists for the whole community and all are welcome. We are here first and foremost to encourage people in their Christian faith and life, and want to learn from the people we meet, not to judge them for the things we don’t understand. We are a diverse community, with different ideas and and backgrounds, coming from a variety countries with different cultures.

You will be well aware that we live in an amazingly diverse area, and we know that many of our neighbours are struggling with the pressures of twenty first century living, so our second commitment is to finding ways to serve and support the most vulnerable people in our area. Currently the most obvious way we do that is by running a weekly open door food bank on a Tuesday morning, but we are always looking at new ways to provide warmth, welcome support and advice. We are small church community, so we have very limited resources in an old, large, beautiful but often cold building so there’s only so much we can do, but like the school, we are named after the Archangel Michael, and it’s an angel’s job to bring a little bit of heaven down to earth, and that’s what we aim to do when we can.

We are located on what is perhaps the most religiously diverse crossroads in a religiously diverse city. Just about every major faith community worshiping in Britain today is worshiping with half a mile of here, so our third commitment is to building strong and supportive relationships between different faiths, sharing our concerns, discussing our differences and looking at what we can do together. As a church congregation we share and encourage the school’s commitment to honouring the prayers of other, non-christian, faith communities in worship. We know that some Christians feel uncomfortable praying alongside Muslims and Sikhs, but as we seek to live out our christian discipleship in times of prejudice and division, it is for us an important witness to our unity under God that we listen respectfully to one another and give our brothers and sisters the space in which to tell their story and explore their faith. Jesus has some of his most interesting conversations with those who did not share his Jewish identity, and he listened to their different perspective without telling them that they needed to abandon their heritage. No-one is required to make someone else’s prayer their own at St Michael’s unless they want to, but we are all expected to listen to the prayers of others with attentiveness and respect.

It will hopefully come as no surprise that our fourth commitment is to our school. The church congregation is proud of the children and staff and it wants to build on the relationship that has grown over past years. We welcome the school into the church building every half term and lead collective worship in church each week. We have hosted forest school in our grounds and run workshops to help children experience the Christmas and Easter stories through shared activities. We serve on the governing body and sometimes ask the whole staff team over for breakfast. The parish priest is often around to meet parents at the school gates and to talk with children over lunch. We talk together about the values, spiritual identity and christian distinctiveness of our school. And we are establishing a Sunday afternoon church drop in at the Community Hub, with a chance to chat over a cup of tea, bring your questions and your prayers, and share bible story together.

We look forward to what the future may bring and the ways in which working together can make all our lives better. We want to help our children recognise God’s blessing in their lives so that their lives (and ours!) can become a blessing to others. We are all God’s children: may God’s grace, mercy and kindness give each of us the encouragement and strength that helps our children to truly flourish.

Father Dominic Melville