THANKYOU Gordon Thornett, Sutton Coldfield Chamber Choir  &  Bournville Strings for a fabulous 9th Annual Christmas Charity Concert Almost 300 gathered to hear and see this wonderful Christmas event again and had a wonderful time.  Money was raised for St Martin’s creative arts ministries and for St Basils, working with homeless young people. Thankyou for all who gave generously. Final figures from the collection came to £470!  If you’d like to you can comment or add your thanks to the choir and musicians here.

Here’s some info about a project that our young people, working with other young people in the city, did recently. Transforming Church – St. Martin in the Bull Ring – St. Thomas Garretts Green MyFaith Video Project Just before Christmas 2011 we applied for and secured funding from the Transforming Church Fund to run a video project at St. Martin in the Bull Ring. The concept was: – to team up with another youth group from Birmingham; – to run training sessions for all aspects of film-making, recording and editing; – to use workshops, activities and discussions to explore what faith is and what it means in our lives. The working title for the project was ‘My Faith’, and we hoped that by the end of the project the young people would have developed the skills and ideas to produce several short films about their faith. In Spring 2012 we linked up with the youth group at St. Thomas Garretts Green, and we held our first project day just after Easter 2012. Through the

St Martins Whole Church Alpha: Exploring the basics of the Christian Faith From  Sunday 13th January to Sunday 31st March (Easter Day) at all the services, St Martins will be exploring the questions posed from the Christian Enquiry Course Alpha. We will do this through sermons, small group discussions, questions posed in a small theme guide and over bring and share lunches that will take place after our 11am services on Sunday 27th January, Sunday 24th February and Sunday 24th March (Palm Sunday). This is an opportunity for anyone who is wanting to know more about the Christian Faith to come along listen, chat, ask questions, as well as for those who have been Christians for a while to be reminded and encouraged by what we believe. Each service has it’s own particular flavour and tradition but essentially the pattern will be as follows:   Sunday 9.30am, Holy Communion service: Sermon will be given on the theme, with an opportunity after the service for an informal chat over