The Magazine, February 2004 (Section 1)

Magazine Production Team
Deadline for March magazine: 15th February

Team News

Wholeness and Healing Group
On the 11th January Russell Goodburn, Janet Murton, Jenny Colby, Mary James and Caroline Comer-Stone started the preparation to take communion to the sick and housebound. We call this ‘communion by extension’. This important ministry will support the visits that take place already with the clergy, but will mean that people can receive communion weekly rather than monthly as at present. These lay people will take out the consecrated bread and wine from the main Sunday Services to those who are unable to get to church for any reason. We hope to license them on 15th February. Jeremy and Margaret who are doing the training will write more next month.

A New Curate
Mark Ackford has been appointed as assistant curate in the Bracknell Team Ministry. He will be made deacon in late June and will begin his ministry here in July. Normally curates stay in a parish for four years before moving on to a parish of their own.
I am delighted that Mark is coming to join us. He is 43 and he studied dentistry at University College London, and since he qualified in 1984 he has been a dentist in both private and NHS practice. He has also been a Senior Community Clinical Dental Officer for the Milton Keynes PCT and has therefore some experience of being a manager in the NHS.
Mark has been studying at Ripon College, Cuddesdon since 2002 and is doing the Diploma in Ministry course. He has good experience of preaching and the leading of services, he has experience of team working and has a good understanding of the healing ministry and working with young people. He is a former Assistant District Commissioner in the Scouts and was a senior Bishop's Chorister.
He is married to Suzanne and they have two children, Catharine 6, and Joshua 4. As a family they are looking forward to being in Bracknell - they will live in Micheldever Way and the house is a good one for a family.
Please keep Mark and his family in your prayers as they prepare to come here.

Christmas
Thank you to all those people who helped over the Christmas services. We had record attendances in all three churches and those who came were made very welcome.

Lent
Lent begins this month! There will be an Ash Wednesday Service in Holy Trinity Church on Wednesday 25th February at 8pm that will include the imposition of ashes.

2004 Parish Canal Cruise
This will begin on Saturday 24th July and takes in the River Severn, the Black Country Museum, Worcester and Birmingham. We have hired the best boats available on the whole canal system this year and the cost will be £185 per person. For more information please read Steve Richards article on page ……

Peter Bestley
Peter is someone you have seen but may not know. Peter is a priest who lives locally and has shared in the life of our churches for some time now. The Bishop of Oxford has given him a licence that is described as ‘Permission to Officiate’. We welcome Peter very warmly and he will be taking some midweek services and funerals and possibly more things later in the year.

Annual Parish Meeting
This is the time of year when the annual reports are written - please send yours to the Parish Office by 29th February. There will be elections in each church this year and there will be, on our rolling programme, vacancies for a district warden, DCC and PCC members. Each of these roles is for 3 years. We also bid farewell to Geoffrey Creber as Parish Warden and we are currently inviting people to consider this important post which is for 6 years. Jenny Church, our most admirable financial manager, has been obliged to relinquish this post because of the pressure from her day job, which has increased enormously this year. This is disappointing for us, but also an indication of the pressure put on professional people like Jenny. We shall want to say thank you at the annual meeting on 27th April, (which this year is at St Andrew’s), and also look for a new treasurer. Is there anyone out there who can offer some help to the parish please?

Midweek Communion
Now that the Met Office has gone, we are discontinuing the midweek Holy Communion service held in Holy Trinity at 12.40pm. There are other opportunities to receive communion in all three churches and we feel the life of this service has come to an end. Our grateful thanks to those who did the lunches, notably Pam and Richard Gibbs, Kay McCubbing, Jean Gibson and Len Barrett. They have done a wonderful job and have hosted many a profound conversation!

Wine-Tasting
Holy Trinity need to do some fundraising! They are going to start with a wine-tasting evening on Friday 21st May. Put the date in your diary – more details later.
 

[ Top Of Page ] [ Section 2] [ Section 3]

News from Holy Trinity

DCC News
At the DCC meeting last month we looked at worship matters and money. The Sunday School teachers have responded to the challenge of doing something about our All Age service. If we are honest, at present it’s not the best thing we do, but they have come up with some good ideas which we will put into a service and seek your views on. We also decided to make Mothering Sunday’s service on 21st March a non-Eucharistic service. This is a bold step in some ways but that Sunday is also the Family Parade Service and we hope to invite a lot of the uniformed organisations and their parents. At the ‘Time and Talents’ evening last year we all agreed to bring the community into the church and we feel that whilst the Eucharist is central to our worship, on this occasion it might be a barrier to others. We might be wrong but we feel we ought to try it – there will be a said Holy Communion service at 11.15pm following on from the service, which is at the normal time of 10am.
We are seeking a new district warden to follow Andrew Cope, a DCC member and a PCC member. A comment made at the last DCC was that we have too many men at present!

Lent Course
There will be a Lent Course at the Rectory this year based on the film ‘Chocolat’ called Christ and the Chocolaterie. It has already been done in St Andrew’s and much appreciated. The course is an exploration about God, the world and what it means to be human. Each session will include extracts from the film, group discussion, reflection on related Bible passages and finishes with a chocolate feast! Jan Maish and I will be leading it and programme invitations will be available at the back of church. The meetings will be on Thursdays in March beginning at 7.45pm.

Fundraising Events
We have to do something about fundraising for our building. Ideally, we are looking for a person to head up our fundraising drive to start replacing our roof, repairing the tower buttress and the on-going works on windows. We reckon it will cost about £12,000 at present. The DCC are planning various events and they are meeting again this month to do more work on fundraising. Can you help by sharing in a fundraising group? Please talk to one of the wardens as soon as possible! Put the dates of Friday 21st May in your diary and 11th July. On 21 May there will be a wine tasting evening and on 11th July we have the visit of the popular Berkshire Youth Choir.

Sidespeople
Thank you to our sidespeople. They met last month to review their role and again we were reminded of the debt we owe to our sidespeople.

Prayers
Many people use the prayer board and the votive stand, it is a much valued part of Holy Trinity. Can you update prayer requests each month please, and if you want people included in the Book of Remembrance please see Marjorie Briggs or one of the wardens.

New carpet
The carpet is now finished and we are grateful to the estate of Edie Harris which has made this possible and to Daphne who has been most generous in the whole process.

And finally…………….. you won’t believe this but………….. someone in HT over Christmas said to someone, ‘You can’t sit there, X always sits there’. Lord have mercy!

David

[ Top Of Page ] [ Section 2] [ Section 3]

News from St Andrew's

Christmas Services
Thank you to all of you who contributed to the Christmas services. The Pram and Toddler Christmas activities, the Meadow Vale School Carol Service and our Crib Service were all happy celebrations of our Lord's Nativity. Special thanks to Nick Parish, for leading our Carol Service and to Chris Norman and the choir for their hard work.

St. Andrew's Worship and Spirituality Group
This group will be planning some early morning services and some devotional services. Those that appreciate the evening services of compline, evensong, the Rosary and Stations of the Cross need to keep an eye on the weekly bulletin in the coming months. The Stations of the Cross will be held as usual during Lent at 7.15pm on Thursdays at St. Andrew's.
The Group will also be planning the Walsingham Pilgrimage for the summer of 2004. This year due to a request by a number of people we are going to plan the Pilgrimage over a long weekend, Friday morning to Monday evening sometime in July. This means hopefully that those who are unable to take a weeks holiday will be able to take part over the weekend. We have run a Pilgrimage for the last two years and many people have found it rewarding spiritually and socially.

Future Dates
1st February. St. Andrew's Altar servers are holding a meeting for practice of the duties of the server at the church at 5pm. Following the practice we are going bowling. All St. Andrew's servers are welcome whatever age and any people who would like to join the serving team will be most welcome to join us.

7th February. St. Andrew's February Sale
Following the success of the Advent Fayre a number of folk at St. Andrew's were keen to have a New Year Sale. The date we have planned will be Saturday 7th February starting at 10am and finishing at 1pm. There will be bacon sandwiches and hot drinks as well as the usual stalls. You will be all welcome to join us.

Parish Outing in June 2004
We are in the process of planning a visit this summer following another successful trip last year to Canterbury. This year it has been suggested we visit Christchurch Priory followed by an afternoon in Bournemouth.
 

Fr Jeremy

[ Top Of Page ] [ Section 2] [ Section 3]

News from St Paul's

Christmas seems to have come and gone in a flash at St Paul’s and as we reflect upon the season one word certainly comes to mind…and that is busy!

Deck the Halls
Our annual Christmas Eve activity day was a certain success. Children of all ages were entertained, amused and given a wide variety of activities over the day. There was cooking with chocolate, sticking and sewing as well as videos and a splendid game of Pass the Parcel.
This then led straight into our
Crib Service. Held at 4.00pm this service was co-led by Jane Armstrong, one of our Children’s Club leaders, and the story of the nativity was told using the opening of presents and envelopes. One of my favourite memories of last Christmas was when, at the end of the service, I said to the children, ‘Now, no one is to wake up until the clock says, Seven, dot, dot, O, O. (7:00)’. The children looked nonplussed but the adult’s present bust into a spontaneous round of applause!

8.00pm. This is usually a URC Service but Peter Flint and I thought we should share all our services at Christmas so I co-led the 8.00pm Communion. This service was a blissful space in a very busy day and is a service I intend to advertise wider this year, especially for those who cannot make the midnight slot.

Midnight was a lovely service and Peter Flint was especially touched to lead this service, as Midnight is usually an Anglican ‘slot’. There were people there from many different spheres of St Paul’s influence, including funeral families and those who have brought children for baptism.

Christmas Day. Finally Christmas day arrived and the church was filled with flowers, excitement and children clutching toys. We celebrated the fact that we had a visitor from Australia and the Flint family were cooking the largest turkey, but the emphasis was very much on celebrating the gift of Jesus, God’s Son and we did this with joy and thankfulness.
I would like to extend a huge thank you to all who worked so hard at Christmas time. There are too many to mention by name but I noticed that the church looked lovely, coffee was served frequently, chairs were put out and away, readers and sidespeople were present when needed and the children’s work was incredibly well organised. Thank you team, you are great.

And so into 2004.
The year holds challenges and encouragement for both congregations. We have our building project to develop; now the Church roof has been repaired, the interior will be next to be refurbished. We also have joint services to look forward to, our next one being on the 25th of January in the week of Prayer from Christian Unity. And we will continue to explore what it means to be a truly Shared Church.
 
Catherine

[ Top Of Page ] [ Section 2] [ Section 3]

Parish Register

Please remember them all in your prayers

Baptisms

We welcome into the God's family

Holy Trinity
Benjamin Anthony Apps
Austin Jordan Edmenson

St Andrew's
Benjamin Anthony Elvis Perry

Funerals

We commit to God's care

John Dean	Aged 54
John William Tompkins	Aged 57
Colin Herbert Towills	Aged 64
Alan Peacock	Aged 75
Muriel Rosemary Brant	Aged 76
Doris Wilson (Doll)	Aged 81
Ronald Down	Aged 82
Roy Michael Thomas Hurford (Mike)	Aged 83
Edward Winchcombe (Ted)	Aged 83
Albert Carey (Alf)	Aged 89
Arthur Davies	Aged 89
Grace Page	Aged 89
Dorothy Parkhurst (Dot)	Aged 95

[ Top Of Page ] [ Section 2] [ Section 3]

February Diary

This can be found in For your Diary...

[ Top Of Page ] [ Section 2] [ Section 3]

February Prayer Diary

This can be found in Prayer Diary

[ Top Of Page ] [ Section 2] [ Section 3]

Taizé Meditation

These meditations are meant as a way of seeking God in silence and prayer in the midst of our daily life. During the course of a day, take a moment to read the Bible Passage with this short commentary and reflect on the questions which follow.

Genesis 37:22,31-35
When Joseph’s brothers plot to kill him, one of them, Reuben, tries to save Joseph.

When Jacob learns from his sons their false story about Joseph’s death, he is inconsolable. All the evil done to Joseph now falls on his head. That recalls a situation from the distant past. Jacob himself was the son who lied to his father Isaac. To receive his father’s blessing instead of his brother, he used the garments of his older brother Esau (Genesis 27). His father Isaac suffered, because he had a great love for Esau. Now Jacob is the one who is deceived by his own sons with the garment of his favourite, Joseph.

An act has consequences, even if its author is unaware of them when he is accomplishing it. Because Reuben keeps Joseph from being killed, Joseph will remain alive. And this positive act of Reuben’s will not only save Joseph at that moment: by that act, Reuben saves as well the one who, much later in Egypt, will save Reuben himself, along with Jacob and the whole family! A good act bears fruit, even one which is timid and imperfect like Reuben’s, whose main intention was to keep his place as the oldest son, the one responsible.

Jacob’s lie to his father Isaac is repeated exactly in the same proportion for Jacob himself, whereas Reuben’s good act bears fruit which is much greater. The consequences of good and bad actions thus differ considerably. Evil is sterile, and can only reproduce the same evil. There is no imagination, no creativity in evil! A good act, on the other hand, is like a little seed. It multiplies the good it contains, in order to bear much fruit (Mark 4:8). This good cannot be stifled.

Do I know any examples of a good act, which bore much fruit?
Conquer evil through good (Romans 12:21): how is this shown in the story of Joseph, and in my own life

Take time at the end to pray, thanking God for his presence, asking for what you need for yourself, and for those things close to your heart.

Further information on Taizé can be obtained from the Community's website.

[ Top Of Page ] [ Section 2] [ Section 3]