Church Blog
News, Updates, Thoughts

We are looking at being able to use the Honeycomb to provide a warm space for people to come during the day if they are finding it hard to keep the heating on at home or just to find people to talk to.

There are a few of our current groups, such as Tots and the Friday coffee mornings where this will be happening anyway.  The idea however is to use the honeycomb outside of busy times to allow people to just come and sit in the space.

We are looking to have 2 people who will volunteer to come and be in the Honeycomb during the day and allow people to come and use the space to sit in, perhaps make them a cup of tea but mainly let them just keep warm. We are looking for volunteers to come and be in the room, ideally once a week for 2-3 hours.

Here are the times we are currently looking to cover:

• Mondays 9am – 12.30pm
• Wednesdays 9am – 4pm
• Thursday 9am – 12.30pm     

Please let me know if you can help.

Dear Friends

A little over 5 years ago, in response to God’s call and prompting, Kate, Seren and I joined you in Darby Green and Eversley to help lead the churches and to see where God would take us.  None of us foresaw the crazy journey that the world would go on - over the last 2½ years in particular – but I believe God has been faithful throughout.  Even when things have been challenging, we have seen God doing things in our midst and have praised him for it.  We have loved being part of this church and have felt encouraged, supported, and loved during our time here – even on the difficult days. We want to say a huge thank you for so many who have done so much to make us feel appreciated and to help us.

This morning, the time has come to let you know that we believe that God is now calling us to move on to a new phase of ministry and a new challenge.  After much deliberation and soul searching, I have accepted the post of Priest in Charge of the Parish of St Clements in Poole.  I know this may come as a shock to many of you, and I must tell you that the decision was not an easy one.  Although we are very excited by the adventure awaiting us at St Clements, we truly love being here, and it took quite a lot for God to convince us it is time to go. We will miss you all terribly, but truly believe that this is the right step for us, and ultimately for St B’s and St M’s as well.

We will be leaving after Christmas with our final Sunday with you all on Sunday 8th January and I will be licensed in St Clements, Poole on Thursday 26th January.  Although we are sad that we won’t be with you for the next stage of the journey, we are excited about what God will do as we know he will lead you onwards as a benefice.

Over the next 3 months, I am focusing on finishing our time with you here well.  We will be doing all we can to help the churches make the most of this Autumn and Christmas season, to build up the church community and reach out with the light of Christ.  I will of course be working closely with Rachel, Derek, Jane, the churchwardens and the PCCs to ensure that, as far as possible, I can get things on a good footing before we go. But ultimately, as has always been the case, it is Jesus who will lead and grow his church. We will continue to pray that each of you, corporately and individually will follow him wherever the path may take you in the months and years ahead and ask that you pray for us to do the same.

I am very aware how truly blessed we have been to spend these 5 years with you all, and I can only thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all the love and prayers we have received.  May God bless you all.

Providing emergency food to local people in crisis

During the period April 1st - June 30th 2022 we provided the following with emergency food: Adults 719, Children 402, Total 1121

An example of what we hear from a typical client: "I'm going through a divorce and I have had to move to different rented accommodation. I'm trying my best to work, pay all the bills, look after my children...but sometimes I only have a few pounds left to buy food for the whole family. Your parcels make such a difference to our lives! Thank you"

Thank you to everyone who works for, supports and prays for Foodbank’s continuing ministry in this community.

Thank you to all who have already signed up to help.

We are planning a Jubilee Community afternoon on the green outside the Frogmore Social Hall from 12 -3pm on Saturday 4th June. People are encouraged to bring their own picnic but as part of this we would love to serve free tea and coffee alongside scones, cream and jam. There will also be a photo display of previous jubilees, activities for children / adults including a decorate a crown competition and various activities including a magician, plate smash, traditional children's races and other activities.  We would love some people to help with the following if you could:

• Help to serve up tea / Coffee and cream teas from 12 - 3 or a part thereof.
• Help to set up / prep food from 10 - 12 and then to pack down from 3- 4pm
• Help to supervise a craft activity for a part of the afternoon.
• People to come along and support the event with their families.
• People to help package clotted cream into small tubs on Friday 3rd at 10am at St Barnabas

Thanks in advance for your help!

Could you spare an hour or two a month to help at the Darby Green Foodbank, part of Hart Foodbank?

We need help to deliver food parcels to clients. This would happen on a Monday or Thursday between 1:30pm and 3:00pm. We also need help collecting supplies from our central store in Fleet for our foodbank in Darby Green. Again, this would be Monday or Thursday 1:30-3:00pm.

In both cases you will need access to a car and be physically able to carry heavy bags and trays of food. Petrol expenses can be claimed.

If you can help or would like more information, please contact me.

We have been invited by Frogmore Infants to return to doing ‘Open the Book’ Collective Worship’s from after half term.

Thank you to those who have asked me recently about restarting this ministry and to those who have volunteered.  We will be looking at:

• Thursday 16th June
• Thursday 30th June
• Thursday 14th July

at 1.45pm.

If you would be willing to be involved in this ministry, I’m going to suggest we meet on Thursday 9th June at 2.30pm to rehearse the three assemblies and work out what equipment we will need.

Please join us for our Easter Services:

Thursday 14th April

7pm Maundy Thursday Holy Communion at St Peter's Church, Yateley

Friday 15th April

10am Good Friday Family Worship at St Barnabas Church and on YouTube

Sunday 17th April

10am Easter Family Communion at St Barnabas Church and on YouTube

Our giant map of the parish of St Barnabas will soon be complete.

Jane Hughes has also given me a list of the roads in the parish of Eversley and at church on Sunday we will soon have this available to sign up on whilst we make a similar map for Eversley.

 We would love you to commit to praying every week for two streets in the parish(es).   If you live in the parish(es), one of these is your own.  The other is another which no one else has yet committed to praying for.  If you don't live in the parish, then we'd ask you to commit to 2 streets which no one else is praying for. 

If you are fit enough, perhaps you could go and visit the street you are committing to pray for, and prayer walk it. But if not then the act of praying from home for the people, buildings and communities represented by that street is a key indicator to God that we are serious about asking him to bless every person in our area with his love.

Praying for each street once a week or more frequently will also, we pray, open up opportunities in these areas for God to act.  Everyone can do this, so please do sign up when the sheets appear at the beginning of March and we will give you something to help remind you of your commitment to pray.

Alongside praying for our community, we also want to ask you to commit to praying for our Churches.

 Did you know that there are 10,080 minutes in a week?  I'm asking you to commit 10 of them (or 0.1%!) to pray specifically for your church.  Both of our churches face huge pressures at the moment and we need God to guide us and to step in with his resources to help us.  Regular committed prayer for our churches for 10 minutes each week is a way that every single person, regardless of physical ability, can help. 

Often people have said they don’t know what to pray for so we will commit to send out a short list each month of the particular things or areas that we would value prayer for over the next few weeks.  You do’t have to follow or take any notice of this list, but it is there to help guide your prayers if you wish.  Wherever possible we will let you know how and when God answers our prayers and the signs of hope we see.  Everyone can do this, so please do sign up in church this Sunday or if you can’t be there in person, drop us an email and we will give you something to help remind you of your commitment to pray and the first areas to pray for.