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The Primacy of Prayer
This month, on 11th October, the Stewardship and Funding Campaign begins. The subject is unashamedly money rather than time and talents, not because it is more important than these other areas of our Christian giving but because it is the area to which we need to give the most attention. the idea is to get money off the agenda so that we never have to talk about in the same way again. We shall, as good Christians, wish to review our own giving from time to time and help will be available, but this campaign is intended to end the apparently endless asking for money for this, that or the other and to resource the Church for its task in the years to come.
That said, I shall start now by not mentioning the subject any more, safe in the knowledge that you will hear all you need to hear in the coming weeks.
Fundamental to the Christian life, and I would want to say fundamental to all human life, must be prayer. This is because prayer is the basic expression of our personal relationship with God himself, who has made us to relate to him. No matter what good works we do and how much we study, it is in prayer that we begin to obey God's call to us. Our Lord, agreeing with the teachers who had gone before him, gives the first commandment as this, "You shall love the Lord your God with your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength". On the human level we yearn to communicate with those we love, and when we fail, for example, to send a birthday card, we feel the need to apologise.
So it must be with our love for God. Whatever else it includes, it will include prayer, not necessarily saying a lot, but being with God and aware of his being with us. For many of us this is best done at the Holy Communion, or while reading the Holy Bible, but this should not preclude finding other time for God, too, a little each day in a busy life, even if just to say, "Well, Father, this is a lovely day. Thank you very much: please let me use it to do your will," when you really are pushed for time. Moving closer to God in this way can change your life, but being with God, no matter what comes, can only lead to greater joy in life, for then you are doing and be what your creator made you to do and be.
4th, 17th Sunday after Trinity
10am: 2 Timothy 1: 1-14; Luke 17: 5-10
6pm: Isaiah 49: 13-23; Luke 12: 1-12
11th, 18th Sunday after Trinity
Harvest Thanksgiving
10am: 2 Timothy 2: 8-15; Luke 17: 11-19
18th, St. Luke the Evangelist
10am: 2 Timothy 4: 5-17; Luke 10: 1-9
25th, Last Sunday after Trinity
10am: 2 Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18; Luke 18: 9-14
On Friday 16th October at 8pm in St. John's Church, Stamford there will be an evening of questions and answers on the debt crisis facing poor countries.
Speakers will be Quentin Davies, MP for Grantham and Stamford and Martin Drury, Head of Campaigns for Christian Aid.
On Thursday 22nd October from 8am till 8pm in the well of the Queensgate Centre, Peterborough, local Christians will be having a display of the Jubilee 2000 campaign, the debt crisis facing poor countries, and Traidcraft goods.
At 12 noon the mangers of the local supermarkets have agreed to meet with the Christians who will hand over till receipts from their respective stores showing that Fair Trade goods are being purchased and to encourage the managers to continue to stock these items.
During the day Westgate Church will be open for refreshments and the sale of Traidcraft produce.
Volunteers are required to assist in manning the display in Queensgate for two hour slots during the day. If you are able to give a few hours of your time for this cause please contact Revd. Brenda Woods on 342690.
"Did you want your second punnet of peaches?" The lady at the supermarket check-out asked me. I had to confess that I hadn't noticed the "Two For One" offer, and the question put me on the spot. Could we use another punnet What would my wife say? would they keep to the end of the week? In the end I did what most of us would do. I took the second punnet. After all it was a bargain. It was free.
But on the way home I started to think about what I had done. Had I simply been weak, unthinking and greedy? Hadn't I actually fallen into the traders trap? Did we really want those peaches? Well at least they weren't fattening and I was making a (feeble) gesture towards healthy eating... And so I wriggled out of my dilemma and quietened my conscience
Much of our view of Harvest is, I suspect, coloured by marketing. It's hard to get behind the supermarket shelves and back to the basic product. We've come to expect high standards in freshness and packaging in the fruit and vegetables we eat and we forget the growers and packers behind them. But spend a day cutting calabrise in the fields round Swineshead and you'll get a different perspective. (I spent a day on holiday helping friends shear their sheep, and it was a similar story). Or talk to a grower whose profit margins are being squeezed by supermarket buyers and its a different tale. Decisions in Brussels or Strasbourg have significant effects on beef farmers in Galloway. Prices and the fluctuations of supply and demand affect the livelihood of many in our diocese. whether we like it or not farming has become a high-tech industry. It has revolutionised itself the past 50 years. It's no good thinking about it simply in nostalgic ways.
"The reality of working in agriculture in the 1990s is one of job insecurity, casual employment, redundancies, longer than ever working weeks, rural isolation, stress (which is closely linked to the last two points) use of dangerous pesticides and higher levels of fatality." So wrote Malcolm Hancock in the Bulletin earlier this year, drawing our attention to the real cost of some of those "Two for One" offers. The same sort of anxieties could be paralleled in the fishing industry where still comparatively little help has been received to help restructure the industry even though all the scientific evidence available indicates that fish stocks are approaching dangerously low levels and drastic action is needed.
Our good and cheap food is available to us at a cost, and everything, one way or another, has to be paid for. There's no such thing as a "free" punnet of peaches. All of us need to acknowledge that, particularly at Harvest when we thank God for His faithfulness and acknowledge our debt to all those work provide for us.
In September the Priory Church were pleased to greet the choir from the Russian Orthodox Church in St. Petersburg. About 80 people attended and were entertained by a programme of traditional church music and folk songs.
The audience were surprised when the six members of the choir finished their performance with the Beatles song "When I'm Sixty Four".
The Coffee Group raised more than £145 at their Coffee Morning in September.
The members would like to thank all who attended for their generosity and for the excellent attendance.
With the weather this year it may have slipped your memory but for the last few months it has officially been British Summer Time. This comes to an end on October 25th. Please don't forget to move your clocks one hour back.
On September 13th the familiar figure of Efrys Jones (80) was presented with a medal to commemorate his 50 years with the Priory Church choir. After moving to the Deepings in 1946 he joined the choir in 1948 during which time his tenor voice has sung through the incumbency of seven vicars.
As a Welshman originating from the Rhondda he has sung with both church and chapel choirs since the age of eight years old.
Mr. Jones was head of Deeping St. Nicholas Primary School and has worked in St. Paul's School, Spalding and Gunthorpe Junior School in Peterborough.
As a familiar figure in the local community he has been parish clerk in Market Deeping and is presently a very active chairman of the Deepings and Glinton Patients Participation Group which meets at the new Health Centre.
I met Robin Gill while looking for the Vicar of Branxton a couple of years ago, while on holiday in Northumberland. I had serious toothache and needed a dentist quickly, so I thought I'd ask the Vicar, whom I'd met on Sunday. I asked for directions to the Vicarage, but a new Vicarage had been bought and I was directed in error to the former Vicarage, where I was greeted by Professor Gill, also a priest and married to a doctor at whose practice there was also a dentist! Within an hour my tooth had been extracted and I was shown the abcess which had caused the problem. Most of Robin Gill's books are of the very learned and important type, full of statistics and not meant to be entertaining, but this one is different: it is still learned because it builds on the great amount of knowledge that Professor Gill has acquired in his studies of churches, and I would contend that it is still important, for it is a book that the ordinary Christian can read and in it find hope for the future. But it is also entertaining!
In this book, subtitled "Why your church doesn't have to be a pelican in the wilderness" (no prize but some honour for the person who can tell me where "pelican in the wilderness" originates), Robin Gill presents the broad conclusions of current research into church attendance in a lively, sometimes humorous style. On the back cover the Archbishop of Canterbury urges us to read and discuss this book, and I would echo that.
Some of his description of how to ensure that a venture will fail (youth clubs aimed at those just about to go away to university, for example) are excruciatingly near the truth, and he then goes on to suggest ways that individual congregations might aim at growth, and even ways in which whole denominations can plan for growth. He points out that it is when big changes in our lives are taking place that most of us may change our churchgoing (either starting or stopping!). An example would be when we start our families, and the church that can meet people and welcome them at such times will stand a chance of growing. Another would be moving home. In Deeping St James both of these life events are frequently occurring and could therefore form an important aspect of our mission, helping many young families and old to respond to the love of God in worship and service.
There are some surprising facts in this book: the actual statistics are not included, but the interesting conclusions which are clearly drawn from them are included, and we can be confident in those conclusions because of the careful research which Robin Gill has done for his more technical work. Reading this book is a good tonic if you concerned about the "dwindling" congregations so often mentioned by our newspapers.
It is no secret that my husband and I have been naturists for the past 15 years. I find this in no way incompatible with my Christianity; so when I was asked to lead a morning service at our naturist club, for the AGM of the CCBN (Central Council of British Naturism), I readily agreed.
At 8:30am on a wet and windy morning, following the previous evening's lively entertainment, I did not expect many people to come to the small wind-tossed marquee. It was a pleasant surprise to welcome a mixed group of 24 friends and visitors. The service was a simple one. It included the Lord's prayer, intercessions and psalm 121.
I put together a few thoughts that I wanted to share with those present. They were certainly not a sermon; I would not have been so presumptuous, but I hoped that they would strike a chord. From the comments I received afterwards, they did so. This is what I said:-
As Naturists, we are in a better position than most to accept others as God accepts us -just as we are, warts 'n' all.
When I was considering possible hymns for this service, the idea of paraphrasing a popular Victorian hymn crept, somewhat mischievously, into my mind. Instead of "Just as I am, without one plea" I thought we could sing "Just as I am, without one stitch".
If this seems somewhat irreverent, just remember that God shares in our laughter as well as our tears. How could we cope otherwise? As T.S. Eliot said "Human kind cannot bear very much reality." Sometimes we need to lay aside our burdens, unload the stress and let go. To me this is where God and Naturism seem to coalesce perfectly. As we can cast our cares on God, "Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will refresh you." So, in casting off our clothes, we symbolise the release of stress.
Now, I am not suggesting that we should be ostriches and pretend that the world's tribulations do not exist; simply that we need to be refreshed in order to meet life's challenges with renewed strength. So let us be glad that we can share with our fellow naturists what many people would consider a very eccentric way of life. Let us remember how God cherishes each and every one of us, whatever our shortcomings.
And last, but not least, let us be thankful for the gifts of smiles, fun and laughter.
We welcome into the Lord's family:
2nd
30th
We Congratulate:
7th
8th
15th