The Magazine, November 2004 (Section 1)

Magazine Production Team
Deadline for December magazine: 15th November

Team News

Jill with a ‘J’
Jill Ridgeon has decided that the end of her stint as Editor of the magazine has come. We are much in her debt as she has given the magazine much time, energy and skill. We shall miss ‘Jill with a J’ and we thank her for the work she has done. At a later date we can hopefully find a suitable occasion to honour her contribution to the life of the Bracknell Team Ministry.

Memorial Service
The significant team event this month is the Memorial service for families for whom we have taken funerals in the last year. The service has been much appreciated in recent years and will take place on Sunday 7th November at 3.00pm in Holy Trinity Church. Everyone is invited to attend and there will be tea afterwards in the Langley Hall.

St Andrew’s Heating
One of our chief concerns at present is the heating at St Andrew’s. It needs replacing entirely and whilst we are working on it, there will have to be temporary heating and we trust people will understand if it is not quite what they are used to. A number of companies have offered their
ideas and we are now weighing up our options before making a final
decision. We hope to have the new system in place within 2 months. we then have the task of raising funds to pay for the system. It comes at a bad time as we have had to draw nearly £10,000 from our reserves to pay the Parish Share. Our giving has dropped in recent weeks and the PCC remind us that we need £10 per week from every one on the Electoral Roll to break even.

Seekers Course
In the new year there will be a ‘Seeker Course’ run by Peter Bestley. Information will be available at a later date but we invite people to explore the basics of Christianity and possibly at the same time prepare for Confirmation.

Bishop of Reading Visit
Bishop Stephen will be in the parish on Thursday 11th November, and he will celebrate Holy Communion in Holy Trinity at 10am that morning. Afterwards he has a meeting with the clergy and in the evening licenses Nick Parish as Area Dean in St Andrew’s.

Wedding Choir
There has been a good response to the suggestion made last month about a wedding choir, but we could still do with one or two more names. Neil Arden has kindly agreed to co-ordinate the choir and we would be glad to hear from people who would like to share in the singing. There are about 6 weddings next year on Saturday afternoons.

Evening Services
We are going to start Evening Services again next year and we shall publish details in next month’s magazine.

Youth Conference
Following a very successful evening with the young people at the bowling and baked potato evening, we are holding our Youth Conference at Langley
Hall on 21st November from 3-5pm. Our last planning meeting for the day will be in Langley Hall at 7pm on the 16th November. We would welcome anyone interested in youth work or in sharing their ideas for youth work, to attend both meetings

Wholeness and Healing
Thank you to those from the Wholeness and Healing Group who put together a moving and thought provoking service on St Luke’s day on 18th November.
Thank you to The Revd Graham Theobald for his excellent talk, to Jacquie Ryder for her good news story from the community and to all those who supported the service and gave their time and energy to the evening.

David

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News from Holy Trinity

Church Break-in
Our grateful thanks to Graham Dives, Mark Ackford, Brenda Mullins, Nigel Bearne, Geoffrey Payne and Amelia Balchin for clearing up the mess left by our intruders. It involved them in much work and the incident will mean a rethink about our security.


Remembering
Remembrance Sunday is on 14th November and the Royal British Legion Service will be as usual at 10.50am. Our Holy Communion Service will be at 9.30am that morning.
 

Christ the King
The next All Age Service will be organised by the Chocolat House Group on Sunday 21st November. This will involve people who have never prepared a service before and the first all-age service that has not had young people organising the content. The theme will be Christ the King and we hope that you will support the service. Many people have said that the Harvest All Age service was one of the best yet – our thanks to Mark, Helen and Tracey for their creativity.

Fundraising
The DCC have had a welcome letter from a member of the congregation who would like to take a lead in organising more fund-raising events. We hope that a regular series of after church stalls will be held and attract more people into coffee. The DCC will organise more events next year and hopefully repeat some of the more successful events of this year. At the same meeting a DCC member suggested we ask someone to be a publicity office and we wonder if anyone would like to volunteer.

Autumn Clean
Thank you to those who supported the clean-up day, it really did make a difference. Malcolm Taylor will be organising a more regular rota in due course.

David

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News from St Andrew's

Harvest Festival and Supper
Thank you to our friends at Bracknell Methodists for a superb Harvest meal. Thanks also to Brian Davies and his Jazz band for the music and to Bernard Guest for the quiz. Everyone seemed to enjoy the evening.  The Harvest service at St. Andrew's was based on the work of the charity WaterAid. We thought about the fact that 1 Billion people do not have access to clean water. Thank you to the congregation at St. Andrew's for donating £200 to the work of WaterAid.


Jock's Lane Railway event
Thank you to all the members of the Jock's Lane railway society who once again provided train rides on a beautiful sunny afternoon in September to raise money for the Bracknell Team. £185 was raised and thank you to all those who supported the afternoon.


Future Events
Services
31st October    10.30am   Sung Eucharist at St. Andrew's for All Saints
2nd November    8.00pm   Sung Eucharist for All Souls at St. Andrew's as we remember our departed loved ones.
28th November   4.00pm   Christingle service at St. Andrew's - All are welcome to join us in this popular family service
30th November   7.30pm   St. Andrew's Patronal Festival. The Eucharist will be celebrated followed by a buffet - again all are welcome to join us in the celebration. Fr John Allen a much loved and respected former priest of St. Andrew's will be present at the service.


Bible Study
Starting on the 1st November at Bracknell Methodist Church at 12 noon we will begin our St. Andrew's and Shepherd's Lane Methodist church discussion group. The discussion group will focus on a course looking at the Lord's Prayer. We will start with a light lunch at 12 followed by the start of the course. The group will meet for 4 Mondays from the 1st November until the 22nd.

Fr Jeremy

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News from St Paul's

Looking Forward…
It is an exciting and busy time at St Paul’s over the autumn. We have a varied calendar, including Harvest Communion, Uniformed Parade Service and our Shared Remembrance and Plan for Partnership Anniversary services.

At harvest time, as well as giving thanks for God’s generosity to us, we also raised money for goats! Not for ourselves (thankfully - we have no churchyard that needs mowing) but we have raised enough money to send 25 goats to Africa.

Over the harvest weekend Judith Flint, our organist, revitalised our fund-raising by playing as many hymns as possible from the United Reformed Church Hymn book. Starting at 7.00am and finishing at 7.00pm (just in time for harvest supper) she played non-stop, singing all the time. We raised over £1,500 which will all go to the acquisition of our new chairs for the church building.

On Sunday morning Judith had even recovered enough energy to play again, especially ‘We plough the Fields…’ at our harvest communion.
But harvest didn’t finish there. The following Sunday we had our harvest parade and we literally packed the church. It was standing room only as Rainbow’s, Brownies, Guides, Beavers, Cubs and Scouts brought their harvest offering of poems, prayers and a harvest rap…as well as food for ‘Feed the Children’. And more money for more goats.

The autumn has also seen the beginning of our Bible Studies led by Peter Flint and our new 6.30am (yes am) Morning Prayer. If you’re up, do join us in the church for the Morning Prayer, there is even a rumour of a bacon sandwich for the virtuous early birds afterwards!

Looking Back…
All the autumn events come on the back of our summer with a difference. Over the six weeks of the summer holiday’s St Paul’s experimented with service times and styles and this was a time of growth and achievement as well as a few frustrations. In all, the reports over the summer have been good, many people enjoyed the different styles of services but there were those who missed the music in the early service and a few who found the timing difficult.

A working group is looking at the response forms collected after the services and we will consider the results at DCC and Elders meetings.
I think this was an experiment well worth doing and I am thrilled by the way many people were prepared to get stuck in and try different things. I warmly thank all those who supported us and participated during the summer.

The final service of the summer was an Anglican tradition communion service that was led by me, but we had a United Reformed Church preacher, intercessor, reader and stewards. I found this a very powerful service, one I’ll remember for some time; there was a wonderful sense of God’s presence in our unity and service for one another.

Catherine

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Parish Register

Please remember them all in your prayers

Baptisms

We welcome into the God's family

Holy Trinity
Joshua Nathaniel Bayliss
Ella-Lee Clements
Emily May Sawyer
Gemma Frances Potts
 

St Andrew's
Kiane Scott Coombs
Joshua Andrew Ryan
 

Funerals

We commit to God's care

Pamela Ursula Anne Strutton	Aged 77
William Leonard Barton	Aged 79
Joan Mary Birtchnell	Aged 79
Amy Knight	Aged 81
Kathleen Burn	Aged 86
Sarah Anne (Sally) Roffey	Aged 90

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November Diary

This can be found in For your Diary...

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November Prayer Diary

This can be found in Prayer Diary

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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.

Mark 1:16-20
“As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw brothers Simon and Andrew casting their net into the sea…” (Mark 1:16). A few simple words to describe Jesus’ activity, but what activity! Jesus does not give people an appointment elsewhere. He goes right to where people are busy working and earning their living. And from the beginning, he finds people ready to walk with him and share his life. Through them God’s Reign, announced by Jesus in the previous verses, begins to take flesh. People seem to be waiting for Jesus: these first disciples get up and follow him at once. Everything is simple. At the same time, the story allows us to glimpse a surprising boldness: Jesus dares to call them, and they dare to respond. “How is that possible?” we may ask.

Who is this Jesus, and what can link him to these men? And again, what is there between him and us? The following passage (1:21-22) describes a kind of authority that emanates from him. To try and figure out his mystery, others come to Jesus to question him (2:18). Later, the disciples themselves ask openly, “Who is this person?” (4:41). Different rumours spread concerning him (6:14-16). In the Gospel, different words are used to describe who he is, as if just one word could not say everything about him. He is called “God’s Holy One” (1:24), or “the Lord” (7:28). What a mystery there is in this man who seems to come from somewhere else but who is right there and who “passes by” in the midst of others! The disciples will remain marked by this. They will not be taken out of the life of the world but led back to it in an even more involved manner. They will be broadened and transformed in their encounter with Jesus, and their relationship to others will change. Jesus said to these fishermen on the shore of the lake, “Come with me and I will make you fishers of people.”

Jesus is there not to stand out but to bring together. He is there to open up, with those who follow him, a large space of life where all, those close by and those far off, can find the open arms of God.

What impressions does this Gospel story suggest to me? What strikes me the most about it?

Where do we see simplicity and daring in our life as we walk with Jesus?

By what signs can we recognize those who, close by or far off, live as followers of Jesus?

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.

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