church family matters

Transcription

1 church family matters June 2017 Coming up this summer August Save the date, spread the word and consider joining the mission team to journey with children as they go Above & Beyond in a space themed week of events to bring the gospel alive. The club will be led by Pulse Ministries who blessed us last year with our holiday club. Help is needed for a variety of tasks for all or part of the days there is a training event for all the team on Tuesday 20 th June at 7pm. To secure a place, please book and pay online: August After the success of last year s Holiday at Home, we are running another one this August at St Andrew s. Thanks to a generous grant from St John s Foundation, anyone over the age of 55 coming along, will not need to pay a penny! This year s theme is the City of Bath. If you re not able to come, please do invite friends to come along. Molly Spear came last year: It was great fun last year the highlights were Polly s hosting, a royal family quiz, funny hats, and I really enjoyed meeting the Queen (cardboard cut-out version)! Contact Jo Robinson for more information (835835). 1

2 ove Combe Down was our L first event of this kind on the Firs Field on Sunday 7 May. It was a great community event with free ice cream, drinks and cake, top quality speaker Steve Legg, and lots of fun with sport, craft, picnic etc. People who came seemed to love it, and the message of God loving Combe Down was heard loud and clear. Paul: We had so much positive feedback from people, many of whom were visitors from around the village, who hoped that we would do it again next year!! So much thought and planning, so much hard work particularly in setting up early on the Sunday morning (when it was really quite cold!) and then wonderfully taking everything down at the end (when it was really hot - praise God!). Sharon: It was so good to see people chatting Developing a culture of invitation with friends and neighbours; to see the students in the midst of all the well organised sport; to have really good live music; for the excellent flyers, leaflets and posters; to have so many great games and the bouncy castle; for the warm welcome which so many people appreciated; for able men moving all the stuff from the church rooms and the church and taking it all back again; for the creative craft which centred us on Combe Down; for the medical tent being so staffed by such caring medics; for the mums turning up at the baby tent and having great chats with Jan; for Steve Legg getting exactly the right balance of magic tricks, God and laughter; for the presence of the prayer tent and for God growing his kingdom in the midst of it all. What an amazing God we have! Let s see how He leads us for our next event?!!!! LOVE did truly come down in Combe Down. Investing in families Thank you

3 Nurturing a hunger for God Planning a presence on Mulberry Park 3

4 Daubeny Window in Holy Trinity Captain Charles Daubeny THEY THAT ARE WITH HIM ARE CALLED AND CHOSEN AND FAITHFUL I It represents Sir f Galahad you re new presenting to Holy himself to Trinity the Risen please Christ do with pick pierced up hands. a welcome booklet from the welcome desk at The Daubeny family arms are the on back a brass of church memorial and close fill to in the the welcome organ. These card. arms also Throughout appear in the East year window we of the church and were born by have Philip several d Aubigny Meet, to the Crusades in the 13th Century. This Crusader knight, a tutor to Mingle King Henry III, and also fell in a foreign field in the Holy Land in Eat lunches His is the after only English the Crusader service tomb hosted existing by in Jerusalem, located just outside different homegroups Captain Charles John Odniel the entrance to the Church of which you d be very Daubeny, was commissioned the Holy Sepulchre with the welcome Daubeny/D Aubigny to come to. arms The clearly visible after a into the 3 rd Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry during the First World War. The Daubeny family lived in The Brow from 1863 until They were associated with Holy Trinity Church throughout these years and hosted many Parish activities. Charles Daubeny died of wounds received in the Battle of the Aisne on 16 th June, A beautiful memorial window in the Wordsworth Chapel of Holy Trinity was dedicated by his grieving parents and two sisters in May next Meet, Mingle restoration in 1925, but now obscured by a worn wooden cover. Somewhat poignantly, Charles Daubeny was buried in the town where his Norman ancestors originated from in Aubigny, France, just one hundred years ago this month. Rosalind Meryon

5 Interview with Christine Absolon Find out more about one of our new church wardens (and next month you can read about David Purdon), our other newly elected church warden. Christine: I m married to Chris. My name is never shortened to Chris to avoid confusion it s Chris and Christine! We moved to Combe Down from London in 2000 and have been part of Holy Trinity ever since. We have 2 grown up sons. Dan (28) is teaching English in Vietnam, and Charles (26) works in Bristol and worships at St Matt s. I worked for many years as a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in the NHS until I chose to retire 18 mths ago. Chris is a GP and responsible for palliative care and child protection in Somerset. He has recently preached on dying matters and led our Dying Matters Café which generated many interesting conversations. In my free time, I really enjoy gardening and our menagerie of pets (dog, ducks, chickens and doves), walking the South West Coastal Path and keeping fit,with the help of Leighton. I am half way through an MA in Ministry and Mission at Trinity College Bristol. My dissertation will focus on how to encourage lay leadership in churches. I have just taken on the church warden role alongside David Purdon and am excited about what lies in store in this new season. Approaching the vacancy, my prayer is that it will be a time when we can all step up, take on new roles, and explore what the Lord wants to do next. Looking back at our 17 years in HTCD, the full immersion baptisms we ve had with the accompanying testimonies have been a highlight, and I d like to pray that we see many more. David and I are planning to visit many different ministry areas in the church, so that we get a good understanding of the breadth of our church life. We had a lovely visit to the children s groups last week and were so encouraged to see the good work that goes on each week. 5

6 Defender Adventure, June 2017 n 7th June two O Landrover Defenders are heading to Romania on an overland adventure. Jon Williams and Dan Young are leading the group, as part of our Men's Ministry discipleship and outreach. It is a 1900 mile expedition to drive and deliver 2 landrovers Investing in families to charities in Romania reliant on these vehicles for their work. However, it will be a journey of faith and fellowship too! We will be driving through the Bohemian towns of the Czech Republic, mountain villages of Slovakia, the striking city of Budapest and of course the Transylvanian Mountains and Plains. We will visit project leaders and see their work. However, it will also be a precious time to journey together in the scriptures and in prayer, exploring the mystery of faith and being expectant of encounter with God. It will be a challenging time. However, together we will seek to know more of Jesus, guided by the Holy Spirit and in fellowship with one another. As we undertake this very physical journey, my hope is that all of us, some with faith and some with little or no faith, will take a very real spiritual journey too. Please pray for our time together, our safety and our fellowship with one another and those we meet along this journey. Dan Young Nurturing a hunger for God

7 24/7 prayer, 25 May 4 June Thy Kingdom Come Join the global wave of prayer 25th May 4th June. This is an international prayer initiative very much in alignment with the 24/7 Prayer movement. Communities and churches around the world are gathering to pray that their families, friends and neighbours come to know Jesus Christ. A Beacon Event is being held at Bath Abbey on Thursday 25th May at 7.30pm. The service is a Sung Eucharist with interactive prayer stations mixing traditional and contemporary worship. There will be several events across the Benefice, including contemplative / acoustic evenings, creative prayer and worship, and prayer walks. There will be prayer stations at St Michael s church, Combe Down; St James the Great church, South Stoke; and St Andrew s Community church, Foxhill. DATES FOR YOUR DIARY: Holy Trinity will have prayer stations and creative spaces available for prayer. The dual theme will be On the Road and Encounter, lending a real sense of journey and pilgrimage, in faith and mystery, adventure and challenge.there will be hourly prayer slots throughout the ten days, and there is a signup page available on preview.tinyurl.com/ksj3chs. This will be an exciting time with the opportunity for an authentic presence of Christian spirituality, faith and prayer to be at the heart of our communities. I really encourage us to take this opportunity to be blessed by this precious time set apart, to pray for the needs of others, for friends and family, and for the world. However, it is also a chance perhaps to down tools personally and as a church, to embrace moments of intimacy with God in solitude and peace, to listen and hear God s voice in our lives; His comfort, His direction, His faithfulness. SUN 25 JUNE FAREWELL FOR DAN YOUNG IN BETWEEN OUR 2 MORNING SERVICES (Dan s ordination is on Sat 1 July, 3 pm, Wells Cathedral) SUN 16 JULY UNITED SERVICE FOR ALL OUR CHURCH FAMILY AT StACC 7

8 Peggy Dodd Centre s a society we are A becoming increasingly aware of issues surrounding memory loss and dementia. In Combe Down we are blessed to have the Peggy Dodd Centre, a day care provider specialising in memory loss. Some of our own church family have benefitted from its excellent services over the years. Worshipping at Peggy Dodd Others, across the benefice, are also involved as volunteers, from fund-raising and visiting to cake-making and helping at the dementia cafe. Alan Nurturing Hodges a and Tim Dewes hunger became for trustees God after their own relatives had been clients at Peggy Dodd. Alan, Nurturing a Developing a who is treasurer: "It's such a happy hunger place! for That's God what culture of invitation made me want to get involved." Recently our church has responded to a request from Rachel Burns, Head of Centre, for help in providing spiritual support and encouragement for clients whose memory loss or dementia make church attendance difficult. At Christmas the church was full for a very special dementia friendly service. Since then, David and Hazel Jewel have headed up a team taking fortnightly sessions at the Centre. Clients engage enthusiastically in worship, Bible reading, talks and discussion groups. David says "Everyone is so appreciative and full of joy. It's rewarding and humbling to be involved." Paul Maxwell-Cook takes his dog Harvey for "pat and chat"