Church Blog
News, Updates, Thoughts

Please come and join us at our Christmas Services:

Friday 9th December

5:30-7:00pm Fireside Carols (at St Mary's Church)

Sunday 11 December

10:00am Community Carol Service

Christmas Eve

4:00pm Christingle Service

11:00pm Midnight Communion (at St Mary's Church)

Christmas Day

10:00am Holy Communion

With the cost of cards and postage ever increasing, the idea was put forward to have one Christmas card which everyone could sign at the back of the church.

There will also be a donation box for any donations they wish to make instead of buying cards.  The money raised will be donated to a charity.  Please give any suggestions for a charity to Margaret.

A huge thankyou to Marilene, Rachel, Derek, Kate, Seren, Abby, Penny, Kathy, Jane L, Jane H, Jeanette, Jackie who helped out with our schools days at St Barnabas over the last two weeks.

In total, nearly 300 children from Potley Hill, Frogmore Infants and Spring were able to engage with the Christmas story as part of their RE Syllabus.

Thank you so much!

On 1 November 2022 our Diocesan Vacancy in See Committee has asked us to hold a day of prayer and fasting to pray for the Holy Spirits guiding in the process for discerning and appointing our next Bishop of Winchester.

We are also suggesting we use the day as an opportunity to pray for the next Priest in Charge for our own parishes.

We will be holding the following events during the day where this will be our particular focus of prayer but you are also invited to offer your own prayers at other times in your own way:

• 10am - Online and in person Morning Prayer at St Mary’s
• 11.30am - Holy Communion at St Barnabas with a focus on prayer
• 6.45pm - Prayer meeting at St Barnabas prior to the PCC Meeting at 7.30pm

A huge thank you to everyone who came along, and especially to those who helped with the Lite Nite at St Barnabas on Saturday.

We had a good number of people come and join us, and quite a lot from outside our regular congregations in particular.  Lots of fun was had and we took over £130 in donations.

A huge thank you to Derek and Jeanette in particular for organizing it, and for everyone who took on jobs and helped make it so much fun.

Over the last few years we have struggled to get sufficient numbers together for our midnight services to justify them and so I have been asked if it is worth holding one this year.

If you think that you are most likely to want to come to a service at 11/11.30pm on Christmas Eve, please could you let me know by Friday 4th November and we will take a decision on whether / where to hold a midnight communion service this year.

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.

For the next four weeks we will once again be joining in with generous June.

This is an opportunity for each of us to reflect on God’s generosity to us, and our own response both in terms of the time, talents and money that we give back to God, and also our attitudes to those around us. We will very helpfully be led in our thoughts with sermons both by live visiting speakers in some cases, and in talks pre-recorded by our Bishop’s David and Debbie. As we engage with generous June once more, we will be inviting everyone to review our giving to church once more and look at what God is calling us to give.