Choir & Musicians
All Saints Thelwall is blessed with a group of extremely enthusiastic and dedicated musicians, both instrumentalists and singers, who faithfully lead the worship each week. In the absence of a Musical Director, five of them (Elaine, Trish, Julia, Val and Helen) take it in turns to choose the hymns each month which leads to a good variety of music. Caroline will be taking over from Elaine in 2026, giving Elaine more time to do all the necessary reporting to CCLI regarding licences etc. Trish, Felicity and Julia share the organ/piano duties and Felicity, Julia and Elaine also play guitar when possible, not forgetting Helen on the tambourine. Trish also takes the choir practices most weeks.
We choose hymns mostly from Songs of Fellowship, mixing traditional familiar ones with the more modern ones we love and this past year we again introduced a few new songs. On Easter Sunday the choir sang Three Days as an anthem and there were four choir items at the Christmas Carol Service, including Born in Bethlehem, which was written by Jean Sheppard, a former Lay Reader at All Saints, and the renowned Stephen Hough, her former pupil. Members of the church choir and singers also led the singing of carols in the two village pubs in the run up to Christmas, raising money for the Children’s Society. There are a handful of Sundays during the year when no instrumentalists are available and Trish (pianist/organist) and Jon (IT guru) have, with the help of choir members, recorded a variety of hymns which can be played through our sound system. We now have a library of well over 50 of these and continue to add more as needed. This means that there are no services without music.
Our vision for the coming year is to support the PCC, the Worship Action Group and the Children and Young People’s Group in their strategies, making more use of Out of the Ark music used by the Junior School, whilst being mindful of retaining well known or easy to learn songs which are familiar from school days, to help congregation members feel included and at ease.
Finally, a huge thank you to all those who contribute to the musical worship in our church in any way – it is very much appreciated.
