www.keresleychurches.org.uk

Our Our Our CommunityCommunityCommunity

July/ August

2013

50p

Inside this issue:

Parish Calendar 2

Local News 3

The way I see it 4

Parish BBQ 4-5

Whose world is it

anyway

5

From the archives-

1914 Choir trip to

Blackpool!

6

Parish Register 7

Children and Young

people

7

Mouse page 8

Prayer to stay

connected

8

Before we can pray,

Thy kingdom come’,

we must be willing to

pray, My kingdom

go’. Alan Redpath

Space Academy is a five-day holiday club, for 5 to 11s. It will be

running in the Church Hall on Monday to Friday, 29th July to 2nd

August from 10am to 12 noon, cost £1.50 per day. For information or

to book a place please contact Steve Medley on 76331910 or email

holidayclub@keresleychurches.org.uk.

Join other astronauts at Space Academy

to discover how God was faithful to Daniel

and his friends as they tried to live for him

in a foreign land that was so different it

was like being on another planet.

There will be a Family Service on Sunday 4th August at 10.30am at St

Thomas’ to draw the week together, followed immediately by a

Messy Picnic in Coundon Hall Park. Bring something to sit on and

your picnic. There will be more fun and games after lunch.

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J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 1 3 P A G E 2

July

Messy Breakfast 6th July

The next Messy Breakfast will be on Saturday 6th July, 9.30-11am, and the theme will be ‘Abraham’.

Sunday 7th

Theme - Prayer: How to pray 9am St Thomas

Holy Communion and hymns. Mark Norris 10.30am St Thomas

Family Service. All age worship team 10.30am KVCC

Holy Communion. David Musgrave

Sunday 14th

Theme: Adventures in Prayer 9am St Thomas

Holy Communion. Mark Norris 10.30am St Thomas

Family Communion. Mark Norris and Pete Hudson. Sunday school party

10.30am KVCC Family service. Steve Medley

Sunday 21st

9am St Thomas Holy Communion. Mark Norris

10.30am St Thomas Summer worship. All age team

10.30am KVCC Holy Communion. Steve Medley

Sunday 28th

9am St Thomas Holy Communion. Mark Norris

10.30am St Thomas Summer worship with Communion. All age team

10.30am KVCC Morning Worship. Les Armstrong and Steve Medley

Monday 29th to Friday 2nd

Holiday Club in the Church Hall. 10am til noon. See page 1 for details

August

Sunday 4th

9am St Thomas Holy Communion

10.30am St Thomas Holiday Club family service. Holiday Club team. Followed by Messy Picnic in the Park—bring your picnic and something to sit on!

10.30am KVCC Holy Communion. Rev Graham Gee

P A G E 2

Services at St Thomas’ and Keresley Village Community ChurchServices at St Thomas’ and Keresley Village Community ChurchServices at St Thomas’ and Keresley Village Community Church

Sunday 11th

9am St Thomas Holy Communion

10.30am St Thomas Summer Worship. All age team

10.30am KVCC Family Service. Steve Medley

Sunday 18th

9am St Thomas Holy Communion. Mark Norris

10.30am St Thomas Summer worship. All age team

10.30am KVCC Morning service

Sunday 25th

9am St Thomas Holy Communion. Mark Norris

10.30am St Thomas Summer worship and Baptism. All age team

10.30am KVCC Morning worship. Sam Murray

September

Sunday1st

9am St Thomas Holy Communion. Mark Norris

10.30am St Thomas Summer worship. All age team

10.30am KVCC Holy Communion

Sunday school and Pathfinders take a

break for the summer and will restart

on Sunday 8th September

House Groups and the Refreshment For All group will also be taking a break over summer.

The next issue of the magazine will be September.

Sunday Morning Activities at St. Thomas’ Church at 10.30am for Children and Young People (during term time) 1st Sunday

Family Service in Church 2nd, 4th and 5th Sundays

3-11s, Sunday School in Galilee Room, 11+, Pathfinders in the Church Hall. All join the service at the Peace

3rd Sunday All ages start in Church

O U R C O M M U N I T Y P A G E 3

D on’t forget to pick up some items from the list below when you go shopping.

There are collection boxes in both churches.

There are some items we need more than others at the moment. We particularly need tinned fish, small and normal size, and tinned meat.

Milk (UHT or powdered)

Sugar (500g) Jam

Fruit juice (carton) Cereals

Tinned:

soup

baked beans

tomatoes /veg

MEAT/FISH

fruit

sponge pudding

rice pudding

Rice

Pasta

Instant noodles

Instant mashed potatoes

Pasta sauces

Biscuits or snack bars

Tea bags (40 or 80) Instant coffee

Summer Worship

Over the summer holidays our 10.30am services will be a little less formal as we seek to include something for all ages each week.

There will be a Holiday Club Family service on 4th August followed by a Messy Picnic in Coundon Hall Park. Bring your picnic and something to sit on!

Other weeks will include all-age communion, and one week will also include a Baptism.

We look forward to seeing you there and worshipping together as the ‘Big Family of God’.

Jo’s jump

A member of our

congregation for many years, Jo Goodwin is fulfilling a dream this September, and with it she is aiming to raise money for Save the Children. She writes:

“I became a widow in February 2010 and, after the period of mourning, like countless other women, began a new life.”

In September she will be going over to visit her cousins in New South Wales, Australia, who she hasn't seen since they were all teenagers, and while she is there she is planning to fulfil one of her long held ambitions: to do a tandem skydive. It is booked for the end of September.

“It would seem a wasted opportunity if this wasn't sponsored. Like many people I know, I have sponsored children's education through the Save the Children Fund and I thought that the fulfilment of my dream could also be a way of supporting this excellent charity.”

If you would like to sponsor Jo you can do so through Just Giving at

http://www.justgiving.com/JoGoodwinskydive

or you can give a donation when you see her, or leave a donation with the parish office.

A very successful Family Fun evening was held at the Church Hall on Saturday 6th July where £270 in donations and pledges was raised.

All the very best, Jo, enjoy the view, and come back safely to us!!

J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 1 3 P A G E 4

A ugust is, of course, the great holiday month in Britain. Families, constrained by the school

holidays, pay over the odds to arrange a week or two at the seaside or on a Mediterranean beach. Older people and singles breathe a sigh of relief as it seems that half the population has decamped elsewhere and they’ve got the park, shops and golf course to themselves. Either way, it’s a change of routine, a break from the relentless round of the everyday. August, whatever else we may think of it, is different.

We call it a ‘holiday’ month, or perhaps more accurately a month of holidays. That word is important, because obviously it was once ‘holy days’, the whole idea of stipulated days of rest being a religious invention. It started with the Jewish ‘Sabbath’, the seventh day of the week - the one when the Creator, in the biblical story, ‘rested’ from his work of bringing everything into existence. As a consequence, it was decreed that the seventh day of the week should be a universal day of rest, when human toil was suspended (even for slaves), animals were set free from their daily labour in field or treadmill, and for that precious twenty-four hours there would be space and time to be ourselves.

Jesus said that the ‘Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’ - it was never meant to

The Way I See It: Don’t just stand there, do nothing!

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be an irksome burden, but a blessing. It took the ingenuity of religious heresy hunters to turn that glorious opportunity into an impenetrable code of rules. But the principle survived. Most cultures have followed the Jewish example of a weekly day of rest, including of course the Christian translation of the Sabbath to Sunday, the day of the resurrection. There followed, over the long centuries of Christian history, the introduction of many other holy days, to commemorate the saints, or particular events in the life of Jesus - Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost and so on. Holy days, like the original Sabbath, gave people time and space to be themselves, to think and pray, to enjoy family and friends and to give thanks to the God who invented the whole idea.

All of this may seem a long way from the modern package holiday, or indeed Sunday as people now experience it in the aisles of IKEA rather than an ancient church. But it doesn’t have to be. Wherever we go this month and whatever we do, space and time are likely to be under less pressure than during the other eleven months of the year. It is up to us how we use them, of course, but rest, reflection, meditation and prayer have proven healing qualities. Turning part of our holidays into holy days will probably lower our blood pressure and raise our spirits. Well, it’s surely worth a try!

O U R C O M M U N I T Y P A G E 5 O U R C O M M U N I T Y P A G E 5

Parish BBQ

June 2013

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The Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. Psalm 24:1

Who owns the world? According to the Bible it belongs to God. If we care for someone, we care for what belongs to them. It’s as simple as that. Us Christians have no choice – if we believe in a loving creator God, we cannot but care for his world.

And if we leave God out of the picture, whose world is it then? Doesn’t it belong to whales and polar bears as much as it does to us? And, as

Whose world is it anyway?

arguably the most thinking, feeling species, do we not bear responsibility to hand on to future generations something as safe, beautiful and liveable-on as we have enjoyed?

By allowing ourselves to be seduced by the “consume more and you will find happiness” lies of the economic growth god, we are living a three planet lifestyle and thereby treating the world like a sponge to be squeezed to the last drop.

So, what to do? Just by monitoring our energy use, by taking care over where we source our food, how (and, indeed, whether) we travel, and saying “no” to the “consume more” adverts, we reaffirm that it is not just our world, it belongs to God, polar bears and children.

J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 1 3 P A G E 6 P A G E 6

As our thoughts turn to our summer holidays, this wonderful description of the annual choir outing comes from the August 1914 issue. A packed 24 hours . . . and I mean 24 hours!

O U R C O M M U N I T Y P A G E 7 O U R C O M M U N I T Y P A G E 7

When light creeps in through the chinks of the

door

When the mist ascends from the mountain floor,

When the ocean shimmers like burnished ore,

Let me give the praise.

O God of the morning, Christ of the hills,

O Spirit who all the firmament fills,

O Trinity blest who all goodness wills,

Keep us all our days.

From ‘Morning’, an ancient Celtic poem

THANKSGIVINGS

23rd

June Kiana Lena Christy Leyla Elsie Roberts

WEDDINGS

15th June

Paul Simon Clements & Sarah Jane Barnes

22nd

June Jordan Nicholas Sherlock & Michelle Jennifer Taylor

RENEWAL OF VOWS

22nd

June Nickie and Steve McDonald

BURIAL

12th June

Dorothy Eileen Waring aged 85 of New Road

Burial at Lenton’s Lane:

11th June

Frank Robinson aged 93 of Haywards Green

CREMATIONS

17th May

Dorothy Bowen aged 93 of Halford Lodge

17th June

William ‘Bill’ Hall Brown aged 73 of The Crescent

25th June

Arthur ‘Hayden’ Howells aged 87 of Bennetts Road

26th June

Doreen Glass aged 91 of Sadler Road

27th June

Tracey Anne Freemantle aged 44 of Bennetts Road South

Uniformed Groups

Meet in the Church Hall : 9th Rainbows, Mondays, 6-7pm 13th Brownies, Mondays, 6.00 - 7.30pm 9th Brownies, Wednesdays, 6.00 - 7.30pm 9th Guides, Thursdays, 6.30 - 8.30pm

Meet in the Scout Hut: 41st Cubs, Mondays, 6.45 - 8.30pm 41st Scouts, Tuesdays, 7.00 - 9.00pm 41st Beavers, Fridays, 6.00 - 7.30pm (for 6-8 year olds )

Youth Essence

Thursdays 7.30pm to 9pm in the Galilee Room, School year 9 upwards

Regular Activities in the Church Hall

NB the Church Hall is not usually available for late night

Discos

Pre-school Playgroup: Mondays to Fridays, 9am - 11.30am and 12.30pm – 3pm

Brownies, Guides, Cubs and Scouts meet on weekday evenings. See above for details.

First Steps . . . with Jesus

For babies and pre-school children with their parents and

carers, weekly in term time

Mondays 1.30-2.30pm Meets in the Galilee Room,

Wednesdays 1.30-2.45pm. Meets at Keresley Village Community Church

Children and Young People Parish Register

Trailblazers Children's Club

Mondays 5-6pm at Keresley Village Community Church

Thursday at St T’s Thursdays From 6pm to 7pm For 5-11 years Meets in the Galilee Room

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