Hello to you all, I hope you are either enjoying the hot weather as much as I am or finding ways to keep cool. As is the case most summers the church becomes the coolest place to be! I hope those of you who have returned to school this week, or have someone in your household who has, have had a good start to the new year and that anyone joining new schools is beginning to find their way and settle a little bit. As many people’s summer break comes to an end we have also now come to the end of our summer sermon series. What a great five weeks it has been! Between our sermons on Sundays and our many, many midweek opportunities, we have seen so many of our church community engage with what church is all about in so many different ways. From our energetic Teddy Bears Picnic to begin it all until our peaceful centering prayer on Wednesday night it has been a rich time of socialising, reflecting, studying, praying and worshipping together as a community. We hope that you have enjoyed something different over the last few weeks and we look forward to continuing with more of all the things you loved the most! This coming Sunday we have our usual 8:30 Holy Communion as well as our monthly Café Church at 10:30 where we will be joined by Helen Howarth from Safe Families. Helen will be telling us more about the amazing work they do as well as how we can get involved as we think about how we can be the hands, feet and heart of Jesus in our community. Come along to find out more, it would be great to see you at either service. All are welcome at St Martin’s! Grace & peace, Rev. Phil
Hello to you all, I wonder what you got up to for the bank holiday weekend last week? For me it brought a weekend of camping as we attended a music festival called Greenbelt. As I sat beneath the trees listening to loud music I was so struck by God’s delight and involvement in all parts of our lives. Last Sunday we reflected on worship and this coming Sunday we will think about prayer and I feel my experience at Greenbelt included both. Not so much in a literal sense but because worship and prayer can flow into everything we do. A song that longs for the end of war and the blooming of flowers from the mud can become a prayer. A waving flag can be part of our worship of a creative God. I think the writer of 1 Thessalonians captures this idea too: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 For me a music festival like Greenbelt is a place where I find God and fresh inspiration in faith. I wonder where you find those things? Are there activities you do as well as church that draw you closer to God through prayer and worship? Whatever you did over the bank holiday I hope you have found refreshment. For those who are now looking ahead to a new school year, I pray you will find peace despite what can be a rush of final preparations and emotions. I hope everyone starting this new school year, and especially those starting for the first time, have a fun and exciting start to this new chapter. This Sunday the Licensed Lay Ministers will lead us in Morning Prayer at 8:30 and then at 10:30 we will share Holy Communion with Sunday Spirit as we continue our series on the building blocks of church with our final topic: Wonder. Why is prayer important and how can we do it even when it’s hard? What does it mean to embrace mystery and wonder? Our additional opportunity this week will be an evening for Centering prayer on Wednesday at 7:30pm, all are welcome. No experience needed! See you on Sunday! Rev. Phil
Dearest friendsI hope you have had a good week - for those households where exam results have been received, I hope all is well! For those who may feel that their chances have gone "down the drain" if they didn't get the results they wanted either this week with GCSE's, or last week with A levels, I can confirm that I have checked the drains and there are no missed chances or lost opportunities there at all!It continues to be so life enhancing to follow our sermon series. For many churches, the Summer holidays are almost written off as a quiet time where so many people are away. It has been so good to turn this attitude on it's head at St Martin's, in saying rather than going "quiet" we're going deeper, to consider who we are and who we're called to be as a church. With all of the resources shared on email, it also means those of you who can't make it to church on Sunday can still engage with the message, particularly with the Monday takeaway each week.Over this last week we have continued with our exploration of "World" as a building block of what it is to be church. Beginning with a wonderful gathering at Southlands on Monday, we had a time of joy, conversation, singing and prayer ... plus a lovely cup of tea with all of the residents. It was also so good to have some members of the congregation sharing in the service. We'll be going every month on the 3rd Monday at 1.30pm. do please come along if you would like, it truly is a joyful experience to take church "out" into the community. We also met on Wednesday evening to look at what it is to be a Christian presence here in the parish. Conversations were fascinating and eye opening as we considered the demographic of the parish, where people tend to meet as community within the spaces in the parish, and how we might be, both as individuals and as church, a light to the world. We thought about our physical presence, as well as our relationship presence.There are many more conversations to have about this, this is just the starting point, and you'll be invited to come along to consider this more in the weeks and months ahead. One of the questions we pondered, and which you might want to consider yourself, is what we want our church to be known for in our community? So this week we turn our attention to our next building block, Worship. We'll be considering why worship is important, who is it for, how we prepare ourselves. what do we hope and expect, why do we need different 'ways in" to worship .... so much to consider, and it would be great to see you either at 8.30am for our traditional Holy Communion service, or at 10.30am for our All Together Communion, where all ages will gather together.We have a "takeaway" resource for you this week, to enable worship throughout the week, not just on a Sunday, and then on Wednesday evening, Frank will be leading Evening Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer in the Lady Chapel, at 7.30pm.You are invited to all of these things.With every blessing, as everBecky
Dear friendsThank you for the feedback from those who are enjoying this sermon series, we're also enjoying the preparation for each session and activity, as well as the opportunity to gather in additional ways throughout the week. Having the invitation to consider more fully the place of God's Word, of scripture, in our lives has been wonderful this week, and it was great to gather for Bible study on Wednesday evening, and to go deeper with the Going Deeper session on Thursday morning. Attendees from both of these said how wonderful it would be to do this on a regular basis, and Phil and I are committed to introduce these more in the Autumn. At both of these gatherings we noted that there is not a right or wrong answer, usually it's recognising the questions that are raised, which enable us to share our stories. It was a joy to share the passages of scripture that have inspired, encouraged, or that we have connected with, as well as those which we find difficult. It was so good to go much more deeply into Peter's first letter to reflect on our own faith journeys. In all of this, we have the opportunity to grow in faith, understanding and relationship. This is an important building block of being a faith community, of being church. We gather in order to grow and be transformed, and in this instance, by the gift of scripture to make sense of our stories.So this week we turn to our next building block: "World", with a particular focus on being sent out into the world as people of faith. We will be exploring why we should engage on the local level with our parish community, as well as why a witness to the wider world is so important. We meet in our gatherings on Sunday where Phil will be preaching at 8.30am for our traditional Holy Communion, and at 10.30am for our Sung Eucharist - where we also have some beautiful hymns that will help us engage in our singing as well as our praying and listening. There will also be activities for children and young people in church, as Sunday Spirit doesn't meet during the school holidays.This weeks Going Deeper takes each of the passages, as usual, to offer a short reflection and to pose some questions that enables us to draw parallels from the readings to our own lives. Whilst we won't be meeting in person to discuss these, I hope they will be a useful aid to your own reflections this week.We also have the opportunity to gather next Wednesday evening at 7.30pm. This is to explore more deeply and fully what it means to be a Christian presence in our community. We'll be using some fantastic material prepared by the Church Urban Fund, which has a particular heart for areas like ours, and it would be wonderful if you could come along. You're invited.With all good wishes, as everBecky
