Category: Nurture

This June 14th Newsletter gives the great news that from Monday June 15th churches can be open for individual prayer. However, all public worship continues to be suspended until further notice.

Our next Sunday@Seven service will be on June 28th 2020. Our theme will be ‘A Gospel to Proclaim’. We Zoomed Sunday@Seven last month and we all survived – so, we’re going to do it again this month.

A long time ago when I was a Reader, I was gifted the privilege of speaking on Trinity Sunday to our Parade Service, which meant lots of children of all ages, including the adult children of our Church. It was chaos!

This June 7th Newsletter is for Trinity Sunday. It’s where we recognise the one true God as three persons. This also marks our 250th anniversary weekend and there’s a special message from Bishop David.

This is the third in our series of Stations of the Resurrection. This one covers the Ascension of Jesus and Thy Kingdom Come. Thanks, again, to the Reverend Sue Binks for these Stations.

June 8th marks our 250th anniversary, with the original St John’s being consecrated in 1770. We had a lot of things planned for that weekend but the lock-down has put the mockers on that! In the meantime, please take a look at the middle of the magazine which has some photos and reflections.

This May 31st Newsletter marks Pentecost (or Whit) Sunday. It’s where we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit onto the first followers of Jesus. Acts 2:1-21 details the events of this historic day.

June 2020 is the start of the Season after Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down on the apostles and those with them. It includes Trinity Sunday where we think about the nature of God. And we have readings from Matthew, where Jesus instructs his disciples on how they should behave when they go out and spread the word.

That’s what we need this Pentecost – power for the people of God. The power to glow and burst into flame! The power to mobilise us again. To break through the cosiness and comfort within the walls of our buildings and take the gospel out into the community around us!

This ‘prayer for key workers’ appears with kind permission of Dave Lucas. You can find a lot more like this, using widgets to illustrate the text, on his website: Prayers for Lockdown.

“So, we got Jesus in there. How do we get him back out again?” It must have been a dilemma for God and his angelic extraction team as they figured out how to reunite Father and Son.

This May 24th Newsletter is instead of a magazine and pew sheet. All public worship continues to be suspended until further notice and general access to the church building is still restricted.

As I read and re-read today’s verses from John’s gospel, I found a song growing in my mind. A song which grew louder and stronger: Stuart Townend’s ‘How deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure’.                   

Thursday is Ascension Day, the celebration of the risen Jesus leaving this Earth and returning to his Father. The Vicar will be celebrating Holy Communion in Christ Church at 7.30 pm that evening.

My attention was drawn to a beautiful poem by Elizabeth, Countess of Craven, who lived in the late 18th and early 19th century. It’s entitled ‘I thank Thee God, that I have lived.’ She writes about all the beauties of life but also considers the sad times and difficulties and how we should also give thanks for those.