The Magazine, September 2006 (Section 1)

Magazine Production Team
Deadline for October magazine: 15th September

Team News

Pastoral Ministers
The Bishop of Reading has agreed to come to the Parish on Friday evening 29th September to authorise Tracey Williams, Suzanne Ackford and Sue Halls as pastoral ministers. Their task will be to officiate and minister at some funerals within the guidelines recently agreed by the Bishop. This is something that we don't think has happened before in the Church of England and quite a lot of people are very interested in how it will work. We hope that people from all three congregations will come to Holy Trinity that evening to be present at what is an exciting event and above all to support these three people in this ministry. Please put the date in your diary and share with us in that evening.

House Group Taster
On September 30th there will be a taster session of various house group materials at St Paul's, beginning with breakfast at 8.30am. Invitations will be going out, but this is another date for the diary.

David

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News from Holy Trinity

Confirmation Celebration
On September 10th we shall celebrate the confirming of those who have been confirmed by the Bishop of Reading during this year. The confirmation services took place elsewhere so we think it would be appropriate to celebrate the confirmations during the morning service on that day.

The Tower
As we go to press we don't know the final outcome of the investigations by our architect on the tower and spire. I went up the outside of the tower with the architect and engineer and saw very clearly the problem. The spire is largely wood and it is very loosely attached to the tower: as the wind has blown it about over many years, the spire has dislodged a number of coping stones. Attempts have been made to fill in the cracks, but the time has come to do a proper job. We will keep the scaffolding up - it costs £8000 to put up and down - and seek an immediate faculty for the work to be done. We do not know how much it will cost yet, but be prepared for a big number.

Battle of Britain Sunday
17th September is the Sunday nearest Battle of Britain Sunday and the Air Training Corps of Bracknell will be joining us. Mark, as Corps Chaplain, will be preaching.

Team Rector
From November onwards, the Bishop of Reading has agreed that Mark will be the priest in charge of Holy Trinity until such time as an appointment for Team Rector is made. The Bishop will take personal charge of the appointment and his first task will be to consult with the wardens in September. It is unlikely that an appointment will be made much before next Easter.

Harvest Festival
Harvest Festival is on 8th October and there will be further information and publicity later on this month.

David

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News from St Andrew's

Parish Outing to Bury St Edmunds
This year's World Cup may now seem like a distant memory, but it was on 1st July, the day England played against Portugal, that about 50 of us visited Bury St. Edmunds. It was St Edmund, the martyred king of East Anglia, who was the patron saint of England before we adopted the Turk, St George

We were blessed with perfect weather. It was sunny and warm without becoming hot and humid. We wish to thank Len Barrett for organising the coach trip so ably and efficiently, as he has done in previous years.

The motto of St. Edmunds is "Shrine of the King, Cradle of the Law". "The King" is of course St Edmund himself. "The Law" refers to the rule of law as opposed to the tyranny of a monarch. There is a legend that at St Edmunds Altar in the year 1214, the barons met in order to compel King John to accept the Magna Carta. It is no legend that in the following year 1215, the barons' efforts were crowned (so to speak) with success when King John did indeed accept the Charter.

Jocks Lane Train Rides
The Bracknell Railway Society have very kindly agreed to run the miniature trains in Jocks Lane recreation ground for us again this year.
The date is 24th September next at 2.30 pm. As well as the train rides, we hope to run some stalls to help raise extra funds. This is always a fun event, both for the general public and for us.

Future Plans
During the autumn, Father Andrew will be running some weekly sessions on Celtic spirituality. This is an interest of Andrew's, and we look forward to taking part in it.

Andrew has also put forward the idea of having an adult form of Sunday School, before the normal Sunday service. It is likely that we will be trying this out later this year, possibly on the Sundays of Advent.

Prayers
We remember especially at this time our organist Chris, who is suffering from a broken wrist.
Our prayers are also with the congregation of Holy Trinity, with the uncertainty over the state of the tower and the possible cost of repairing it. We also pray for David as he prepares for the next stage in his ministry.

Peter Bestley
We give thanks to God that Peter Bestley, who served us so well and lovingly before Andrew joined us, has been licensed as Assistant Curate at St Michael’s Easthampstead.

Simon Sellick
District Warden, St. Andrew's

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News from St Paul's

Flower Festival
St Paul's held a flower festival this year and the result was a church filled with flowers, music and visitors. There were 23 displays some put together by stalwarts like the WI and Audrey Ainscough, as well as newcomers to the sport like our Children’s Club, the URC Brigades and the Contact Centre.

The vicar even produced an offering who, with Sharon Robinson, managed to create a tribute to the Hymn ‘God of the earth, the sky, the sea’. It was fearfully and wonderfully put together under the strict instruction of Ann, Stuart Robinson’s mother and included flowers, pebbles and the whole fish tank!

We also went into cake baking over-drive making cakes and biscuits to feed to the visitors and many volunteers sat patiently behind the stalls for most of the weekend.

It was a simply wonderful weekend, a real celebration of God’s creation as well as a celebration of the partnership between the URC and Anglican churches at St Paul's. Thank you so much to all who worked so hard to make the weekend wonderful and to those who attended as a visitor.

We included this prayer in the programme

God, God the Maker
Maker of colour, sound, texture, quietness,
and the restless beauty of living things
maker of granite and mustard seed
of grey cloud and starlight, of earthquake and heartbeat
maker of all that is, of all that has been,
of all that words could never capture,
God, God our maker
We the children of your love,
the creatures of your kindness, the guardians of your creation
We give you thanks and praise

( More photographs from the Festival may be found under the Photos section on the main B.T.M. page ).

Parade Service
July also saw our parade service and Jenny Colby led the service which was also a celebration of the gifts and talents God has given to us all. The theme of the service was Psalm 139 v14.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. [NRSV].

The guides, brownies, cubs and scouts spoke about sports, including dancing, even demonstrating an Hawaiian dance. They also talked about how to look after our bodies. We said goodbye to the Harmans Water scouts and cubs as their group will no longer be meeting and thanked their leaders for their many years of work for scouting.

Goodbyes
July has also seen the departure of two of our friends. Maureen Page has moved to Devon to be closer to family and Angela Evans has left for China to teach English for two years. We are going to miss them both enormously.
Angela’s news can be found in Section 3 of this magazine.

Future Events
Looking forward we have organised a morning to look at the work of our Children’s Club to see how we can celebrate and develop this vital ministry. We are also looking at a new evangelism course that we can do with our URC partners.

Catherine Blundell

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Parish Register

Please remember them all in your prayers

Baptisms

We welcome into the God's family

Holy Trinity
Aiden James Butler
Priya Chibba
Harry James Penn
Molly Jasmine Penn
Ella Louise Clarke

St Paul's
Lily-Rose Mackenzie
Michael Mackenzie

Funerals

We commit to God's care

Holy Trinity

Mark Breadmore	Aged 97
Ayliss Vass	Aged 91
Daisy Carter	Aged 88
George Tibbitts	Aged 88
Donald Green (Don)	Aged 86
Jean Henderson	Aged 83
Olive Gumm	Aged 81
Betty Morgan	Aged 75
Peter Knight (Pedro)	Aged 71

St Andrew's

Albert Price (Fred)	Aged 88
Harry Westlake	Aged 74
Janette Lewes (Jab)	Aged 69

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September Diary

This can be found in For your Diary...

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September 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.

Jeremiah 2: 1-13

These disconcerting words, in which God seems to be speaking angrily against his people, are in fact a sign of his profound concern for them.

Jeremiah brings God’s message at a period of crisis. Its aim is to help them see where their real security lies, to realize that their true identity and their long-term well-being depend on their relationship with God.

The problem is that the people have tended to neglect this life-giving relationship or “covenant” in favour of other things, particularly the worship of “idols” or of “Baal”. This was not simply a question of worshipping the one God under another name; it was quite a different approach to the divine. It identified God with the powerful forces of politics and of nature, especially the forces of fertility. A present-day equivalent might be giving ultimate importance to success. Such a spirituality may have provided a sense of security, but it would lead to people becoming dependent on these forces that are ultimately impersonal, inhuman. On the other hand, faith in the God who brought his people out from slavery in Egypt is a relationship based on what is most human: on love and on trust. It leads towards liberation from what is inhuman. And, moreover, it remains alive even “in the desert”, where the natural forces of fertility fail.

So God calls to his people with the intensity of an abandoned lover, sad because in neglecting God, they have neglected what gives them life. Their alternative to God is like a cistern (v. 13), a kind of artificial cave carved out of the rock for storing vast quantities of rainwater: impressive by its size, but useless if the rock is cracked. God himself is like a spring: perhaps there doesn’t seem to be so much water at any one time, but it is living water, not stagnant, and it keeps on flowing….

- Have I had any experiences in my life when God brought me out into freedom or “through the desert”?

- What for me is like a cistern – impressive, but in the end unreliable as something to live from?

- In what way is God like a “spring of water”? What does this imply for my 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.

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