Church Blog
News, Updates, Thoughts

The latest news and thoughts from the team at St Barnabas.

Come and share your craft skills and enjoy each other's company as we creatively connect with our communities. A chance to relax and refresh yourself, remember old skills, re-use them and anything else we can think of, as we seek to create things of use to the wider the community. These mornings will normally take place on the second Thursday of each month at Rev'd Rachel's home with refreshments.  All are welcome. Please contact her for address details.
 
Over the last couple of years some very talented folk have helped to create angels for school staff, flowers for medical practices and are now working on some book bags for a school. There are further commissions waiting in the wings, and plenty of opportunities to share more. 

You are welcome to join online prayers in person at Rev'd Rachel's house first. If you wish to do this please arrive by 9.45am - she 'goes live' at 10am.
 
 

We are looking to start a new initiative with Charles Kingsley School, which we will also hopefully be rolling out with our link schools in Darby Green soon:

What?

Twice a week – on a Tuesday and a Friday – a small group of volunteers from the church will hang around the school playground wearing church clothing from shortly before to just after school pickup time to engage the parents and children in conversation.

Why?

During the pandemic, and even before, many parents will come to the school gate at pick up time needing to talk to someone about things which are happening in their lives.  Often these conversations have ended up with parents talking to teachers.

The idea of the Playground Pastors would be to offer a listening ear and a friendly face for people to come and talk to about whatever is going on.  The conversations may be mundane to begin with, but as people get to know us they will feel able to share more important things.

Who?

Anyone who can listen.  We aren’t looking for people who are especially skilled or trained in either pastoral care or evangelism – instead we’d love a few people who would be willing to be available to people and engage people in conversation.  Primarily this is for the parents rather than the children, but inevitably they will engage with you too. 

When?

Ideally we would love to get 6-12 people who would be willing to do either once a week or once a fortnight.  The time commitment is only from 2.30 – 3.30pm on either a Tuesday or a Friday and we would offer some basic training beforehand.  We would like to start in November if possible.

If you want to know more, or think you could get involved please contact me.

Thank you to everyone who came to support this last week.

We were able to raise £100 for MacMillan and everyone had a lovely time.

Thanks to Cheryl, Pat and Jackie for helping to make this happen and all who came along to support it. 

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 office at St. Barnabas Church.

Once you have completed your shoebox please bring to the 10:00am service at St. Barnabas Church 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.

Over the last few years St Barnabas has had a ‘waterfall’ of poppies hanging outside from the Cross Window.

Drinks Bottles
Cut along the red line

We would like to repeat this again this year.  I am in urgent need of 21 cool drink bottles.  Please cut them as shown in the picture, (I need the bottom part of the bottle) and drop them off at church.

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:

Sunday

St Mary’s

St Barnabas

 1st

10am All Age Service

Searchers during our 10am Holy Communion Service

2nd

Searchers during our 10am Holy Communion Service

All Age service at 10am

4.30pm – NEW - Sunday afternoon Service - details coming soon.

3rd

Messy Church at 4pm

Searchers during our 10am Holy Communion Service

4th

Searchers during our 10am Holy Communion Service

4.30pm – NEW - Sunday afternoon Service - details coming soon.

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

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.