"No Strings Attached"

Welcome to St. Paul's Puppet Ministry which we have called "No Strings Attached"

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Just over 4 years ago a group of adults working amongst children and young people went from St. Paul ’s Church Oswaldtwistle to a Children’s Ministry Conference at Eastbourne organised by Kingsway.  It was here that the interest in a puppet ministry began.  Two puppets now called ZaK and Zoe were purchased.  They were used a few times in our regular Family Services and were very much appreciated.  No more puppets were bought.  Life at the church was busy and we just could not find time for anything else.

In October last year we were invited to a weekend of puppet training and sharing in Reading by One Way UK who supply our puppets.  Carole Williams and I (Carol Ratcliffe) went to this and we were inspired and both of us felt that now was the time to move forward.  We knew that this is what God wanted us to do.  But where would we get the financial support needed for this new project ?   We had no money but we now had more puppets as we had purchased some for ourselves whilst on the weekend away.

Our young people were excited at the prospect of forming a group as well as some more adults.  We decided to ask the PCC for a loan to get started.  Our vicar Michael asked us to “do” something for Epiphany to launch the puppet ministry.  With the help of One Way UK and a few desperate ‘phone calls we got a Camel puppet and some Christmas scripts and music.  But what about a theatre ?  Well, we made one,  using the vicarage clothes airer and some dark green parachute silk…It worked but was not brilliant.

Epiphany arrived and we had only had a couple of practices….Carole her daughter Hannah, Alison and her son Matthew, The Vicar, Michael and myself were presenting “The Three Gifts” using our makeshift theatre.

Just before the service began I was told by our lay reader that the money was to be given to us to buy the complete theatre from One Way UK from the family of Sam and Dorothy Woods.  They were both members of our congregation and Sam died some years ago and now Dorothy had recently died.  We were all quite shocked at this news but there were more shocks to come.  After our presentation we made an appeal to “adopt” or share an “adoption” of a puppet.   At the end of the service over £400 had been promised as well as the theatre.  All we could say was how we had all lacked faith.  We now knew that God wanted us to do this.

Our group has started and we have a chairman, treasurer, and secretary and a stage manager and we order now via the internet !!!!  Far better than the frantic phone calls!!   What to call our group? A member of the congregation came up with the idea….”No Strings Attached”.  We will be wearing a uniform of black T-shirts and pants and special base ball caps with our group name embroidered on them.

On Palm Sunday we had a dedication of the theatre and a commissioning of the whole team.  The family of Sam and Dorothy Woods were present and we did a puppet presentation in the service. 

Our Vicar has his own puppet….Rover….a dog in a bag.   He appears regularly and the children love him.

The team works well together and we all have a lot to learn.  We are still raising money to buy more things we need and recently the young people raised over £100 when they put on a fashion show.  We have “done” a demo for our local Sunday School Teachers association and received a few bookings from this.  We are inexperienced but God knows that and helps us as we grow together.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us to this point.  Three rousing cheers for God.

He has been so good to us and we could not have been at this point without him.

Praise the Lord !!!