Welcome!

St Melangell's is a Christian church.  Although we're a new mission parish - a little over two years old - we're part of the ancient Orthodox Church founded by Jesus Christ 2000 years ago.

As an Orthodox Church our main purpose is our salvation.  We confess the Christian Faith as expressed in the Holy Scriptures, in the writings of the Apostles and the Holy Fathers and Mothers of the Church, in the Creeds and the Canons of the Ecumenical Councils, in the whole ascetic and liturgical tradition of the early, undivided Church.

Don't worry if those words don't mean much to you yet: everybody is welcome to pray with us and experience something of our life.

We aim to be a welcoming community, open to all people who genuinely seek to explore the life in Christ, free from the conservative culture that has often made churches unwelcoming places.

We aim to be a living community, allowing our faith to influence our actions in our daily lives.

We aim to be a prayerful community, grounded in Orthodox Faith, worship, and life.

Our services are offered in English, and our worship and spiritual life are conducted according to forms of prayer, fasting, and spirituality that have their origins in the ancient Orthodox tradition of Western Europe and the British Isles, and which are collectively known as the Western Rite.

We gather regularly to worship, to pray, and to hear the Holy Scriptures.  We are still few in number but, should God bless our efforts, we hope to grow and provide a spiritual home for anybody who wants to find salvation in Christ.

If you would like to join us or just come for a visit, we would love to have you with us.  You might find the information here to be useful.

If you are thinking about possibly becoming an Orthodox Christian, you might find these pages to be helpful.

If you would like to make contact with us, please feel free to get in touch.

A Brief History

• 19/04/2016 - Subdeacon Cyprian is received into the Western Orthodox Church, having been baptised in the Eastern Orthodox Church (ROCOR) in 2006, and having served there as a subdeacon since 2010.
  
  
• April 2017 - Bishop Gregory of Arles gives Subdeacon Cyprian a blessing to explore the feasibility of forming a mission parish to serve the Greater Manchester area, under the patronage of the Holy Myrrhbearers.
  
  
• 2018 - Work commences to begin to raise awareness of our planned mission, to construct a website and social media presence, to translate and adapt liturgical and musical resources from the French texts into English, and to seek a place to host public services within easy reach of Manchester City Centre.
  
  
• 16/12/2018 - The Manchester mission is launched, having adopted St Melangell of Powys as our heavenly patroness.  Four people worship together in a private home in Oldham, praying Lauds for the 5th Sunday of Advent.  This continues every Sunday morning for the next eight weeks.
  
  
• 08/02/2019 - Vespers is prayed for the first time in the Lady Chapel of the Anglican church of St Cross in Clayton.  Weekly Vespers on Saturday evening continues for a number of months until August 2019, when practical considerations make this no longer feasible.
  
  
• 01/06/2019 - Members and friends of St Melangell's mission make a pilgrimage to the shrine and church of St Melangell in Pennant Melangell, with the hope that this would become an annual occurrence.
  
  
• August 2019 - Oldham Parish Church generously provides a temporary home for public services until a more central and easily accessible location can be found.  Vespers is prayed here weekly until February 2020.
  
  
• 15/09/2019 - Bishop Gregory ordains Cyprian to the diaconate to serve our growing mission, which now has approximately 15 people associated with it.
  
  

  
  

• 22/02/2020 - Vespers is prayed at Chapel Street & Hope United Reformed Church on the edge of Salford, which is to be a weekly arrangement until the building is due to be demolished near the end of this year.
  
  
• 21/03/2020 - The COVID-19 pandemic means that many people have taken the decision not to attend public worship.  Vespers at St Melangell's is live-streamed on Facebook for the first time.
  
  
• 28/03/2020 - The UK is in lockdown and public worship is prohibited.  A temporary chapel has been constructed in Deacon Cyprian's home, from which Vespers and Lauds are live-streamed each week.
  
  
• April 2020 - As Deacon Cyprian's Holy Week visit to the Bethany community in France has had to be cancelled, services for Holy Week and Pascha are offered at our mission for the first time, having been translated and prepared at very short notice.
  
  
• 04/07/2020 - Public worship is once again permitted by law but with restrictions on singing and other activities which would make our resuming public services unfeasible.
  
  
• September 2020 - With restrictions on singing during public worship having been relaxed, conversations are begun to negotiate use of Chapel Street & Hope URC for public worship again, with a planned date of 14/11/2020.
  
  
• October 2020 - A second UK lockdown is announced, meaning that public worship is once again prohibited.
  
  
• December 2020 - Public worship is once again permitted but our previous host church is soon due for demolition.  A number of enquiries with various churches have not yielded positive responses.  Services continue to be live-streamed from Deacon Cyprian's home while the community continues to search and pray for a new home.