Church Blog
News, Updates, Thoughts

Our Christmas appeal will again support the work of the Christian charity Link to Hope.

Link to Hope’s vision is that one day every person in Eastern Europe will have a safe environment to live in and access to basic healthcare, human rights, employment and education.  To enable as many people as possible to help with the effort there are several options for the Shoebox Appeal this year.

YOU FILL A SHOEBOX

Link to Hope accept Family and Elderly Shoeboxes.  They request for similar items to be put in each and every box as they have found that the recipients really appreciate those items which meet their most immediate, and mostly practical, needs.  Please download the Shoebox Leaflet 2021 and follow the instructions.  If you are unable to download the form please collect a copy from the porch of St. Mary’s Church.

The Shoebox Appeal Launch will be at St. Mary’s Messy Church at 4pm on Sunday 17th October – and you would be welcome to bring a completed box then. However, we will be formally collecting completed shoeboxes at our 10am service at St. Mary’s on Sunday 24th October. 

LINK TO HOPE FILL A SHOEBOX

This year if you don’t have time or are unable to fill a shoebox, Link to Hope will do it for you.

DONATE TO THE SHOEBOX APPEAL

Help towards the costs of the Shoebox Appeal and enable Link to Hope to send even more shoeboxes by making a donation.

SEND ITEMS FOR A SHOEBOX

Order items in bulk and send direct to Link to Hope or shop from the Amazon Wish List.

We thank you in advance for your help and generosity.

We’re once again able to leave St. Mary’s open for visitors who might want space to pray, be interested in its history and architecture, or just be curious as they walk past on the public footpath.

From this week it will be open during the day on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

We will open on other days of the week if we get more volunteers to unlock and lock up.

If you can help, please let me know.

From Sunday, 3rd October, we are hoping to restart a regular pattern of services and activities for children and young people in both our churches.

The pattern will generally look like this:

For our Harvest Festivals on 26th September this year, both our churches will be supporting 2 charities:

Hart Foodbank has been at the forefront of our ministry for years, supporting local people who have reached crisis point with food, cleaning materials, and encouragement.

Food.gives is an international foodbank project from the Barnabas Fund, a charity which supports persecuted Christians around the world.  Because they are sending food overseas, they have a very specific list of food items which are the only items which the Barnabas Fund are able to accept.

• Wheat flour
• Rice
• Lentils (dried) For gives PLEASE ONLY collect dried food (not tins), and
• Chick Peas (dried) ENSURE the items do not contain liquid, oil, or animal products.
• Soap (bars)
• Salt

The Barnabas Fund is sending us 30 food boxes which we will then hopefully fill and send back to them and I am hoping between the churches and schools we can fill these, and perhaps a few more as well.  The cost of getting a food box into the hands of a recipient is approximately £4, so alongside our physical gifts, we would love to provide financially to this project to help with the logistical costs as well as for Hart Foodbank. Therefore we will be having a collection at each Harvest Festival Service and at our Harvest Afternoon Tea at St Barnabas.

Following the latest set of guidance from the Church of England for the move to stage 4 of the Governments Covid roadmap, which was issued on Friday JUly 16th, we have taken the decision to continue with outside worship wherever practical for the next few weeks to ensure we can do things as safely as possible.

Given the current high number of cases both locally and nationally, we will continue to ask people to socially distance wherever reasonably possible, and to wear masks indoors.  We will also continue to use individual cups for communion.

However in a change to the previous guidance, we will be allowed to have indoor singing with masks, should the service need to be indoors.

Many people will feel comfortable moving back to closer contact with others following the relaxing of the rules, however, equally as many people will want to maintain distancing and reduce the risk of transmission as much as possible to keep themselves and others safe so we do ask that everyone respect this as we want as many people as possible to feel comfortable coming to the services.

We will be looking in more detail at the guidance over the next week or so and carrying out a full risk assessment.  Hopefully once we have completed this we will be able to reintroduce some other aspects of our shared life together such as refreshments after the services and other activities.

We will review the situation again towards the end of the summer.

Blessings

In the past we have had a cleaning rota for which had to fall into abeyance during lockdowns. I am hoping to resurrect it from September, all being well.

Cleaning would take place once a fortnight on a rota basis hopefully in pairs. The more people from the community willing to do this, the less often each will appear on the rota.

I will try and initiate a checklist too, so that folk know what to look at, but it will be largely dusting, pews and floors. There is a hoover and cleaning materials at church.

If you are willing and able to help, whether or not you’ve done this in the past, please can you contact me.

It was announced on Friday 16th July, that Bishop Tim would be retiring in February 2022.

You can listen to his message on YouTube.

We've been asked by the Headteacher and Year R teacher at Charles Kingsley's Primary School if we could put together 'story sacks' for them.

The idea is we make a drawstring bag that contains the book, and then a selection of toys, puppets etc. that link to the story. We can use our own materials and up-cycled stuff from charity shops to make these. I've outlined below the first two stories and what we might include, to get you thinking:

• Red Riding Hood
• Basket
• 'Mop Cap' that fits the Wolf
• 'Shawl' that fits the Wolf
• Miniature blanket perhaps?
• Pretend Cake
• Pair of Glasses

• Tiger who Came to Tea
• A knitted/felted/crochet tiger
  Dolls/puppets for Sophie and her mother
• Foods from the book - how might we make these?

To help us plan these, I was thinking of having a Craft@Home afternoon Wednesday 9th June 2-4pm in my house/garden. At present I could only have 5 of us here in person (in addition to me), but we can link up with others electronically via Zoom if people want to join in that way. We can work on our own crafts, and chat through ideas for the bags, so we know who can commit to doing what.

Let me know if you want to come in person.

New Wine is free and online this year running from Thursday 29 July – Tuesday 3 August 2021.

However St Peters Yateley, St Johns HW, St Johns Hook and St B’s and St M’s are joining together to put on live New Wine events at St Johns Hartley Wintney and St Peters from Friday 30^th July until Sunday 1^st August with live Kids work, Youth work, Prayer Ministry and Worship led by our own bands.

We will access the teaching from the central New Wine Videos enjoying input from Francis Chan, Julian & Katia Adams, Amy Orr Ewing & Jordan Seng and others as yet to be confirmed.

Along with opportunities to gather together for Coffee in the coffee shops afterwards and other activities it will be a great opportunity to experience what New Wine is like without having to camp – or even leave the area.

More details to follow soon.

Thy Kingdom Come is a nationwide prayer initiative that runs from Ascension Day on Thursday 13th May until Pentecost on Sunday 23rd May.  There will be various opportunities to pray in a variety of ways:

Prayer ideas and bible reflections for personal study 

For each day of Thy Kingdom Come via the Thy Kingdom Come Prayer Journal.

Daily Corporate Prayer @ 10am

Online every day and in person on Saturday's 15th and 22nd at St Barnabas and Wednesday 19th May at St Mary’s. Why not make a commitment to join us in person?

Interactive Prayer Stations @ St. Barnabas.

On Friday 21st from 7pm until 9pm and Saturday 22nd May from 10.30 until 5pm there will be Covid-secure prayer stations suitable for all ages to come along and pray at St Barnabas.  Take as long or as short a time as you have to come and pray for our churches, our community, our nation and our world.

Family Activities @ Cafe46

Every day (except Sundays) there will be fun prayer activities for children behind Cafe 46 from 11am-12noon. Please bring your (or someone else's!) children along and invite anyone who might be interested. Weekdays the activities will be aimed at pre-schoolers, on Saturdays they will be aimed at children up to 11. Parents do need to stay please. There's no need to book, although it will help plan if you let me know you're coming along: roo@stpetersyateley.org.uk Here is the full line up:

Prayer Escape Room and Online Family Activities

There are loads more activities including an escape room idea and Cheeky Panda Videos available via the Thy Kingdom Come website.