Welcome

I was at a training event this week and was struck by this quote from another church present.

'The person you don't know is more important than the person you do.'

In a church community it can be very easy to just speak to those you know. As we seek to be a welcoming community it is important to take the above quote to heart and make time for those you don't know.

Whatever your background or life story, we believe that you are precious to God and we look forward to getting to know you better.

We look forward to welcoming you to St Paul's, you can see how we get on trying to make you feel important and valued.

Stir Up Sunday

Last Sunday, 24th November, we celebrated 'Christ the King'.
This celebration comes at the end of the churches liturgical year. Next Sunday is the start of Advent.
The set post Communion prayer for Christ the King is as follows:
Stir up, O Lord,
the wills of your faithful people;
that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works,
may by you be plenteously rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
This Sunday became known as stir up Sunday and was often the day people went home and made their Christmas puddings!
It is a brave prayer to pray, when we most often prefer the safety of our comfort zones, to ask God to stir us up and use us for His will and purposes.
May it be so! Amen.

Yoga

Spotted this interesting article about Yoga on the BBC website yesterday and how it is viewed by different faith groups. Well worth a read http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25006926

Good News for the Poor ?

Traditionally, like many churches, St Paul's had a "Toy Service" in December, where the toys were given to an orphanage. At Christmas, we remember how Christ came as a baby of a poor family and later proclaimed "Good News to the Poor" and as those who follow Christ, it was appropriate to provide toys for less fortunate children.

With the changing provision for children away from orphanages, in recent years, we have sent our gifts to Mother and Baby Homes and Refuges in the borough. It came as a shock, this year, to discover that council cutbacks have resulted in four of the five homes closing. The other exists entirely on charitable funding.

As a result, this year, our gifts will be limited to the one home. But we will also be collecting money for "Action Homeless’s Winter Appeal." In addition, we will be providing gifts to the diocese’s "Welcome Project" which seeks to help asylum seekers, many of whom are utterly destitute.

We are told that the general public supports the financial cutbacks, but we need to be aware of the effect that they are having on the most vulnerable people in society.

The Bible

Will you be watching? Don't miss it, the Bible brought to life in five two-hour episodes.
1. The Beginning
2. Homeland
3. Hope
4. Mission
5. Passion

Full details are available here
Order a Souvenir Guide here 

Youth Update

Our Youth Worker Lou writes......It’s been a busy and exciting term, here are just some of the ways that God is working with our young people.

Friday Night Youth Friday Night youth is going really well, we have a good core of about 13 young people who gel really well together, we went to see a Christian singer/song writer on the 11^th October and we may be going to see another Christian band play at a gig connected to the school’s mission at Gartree High School.

Sunday Morning Youth Our Sunday morning group is growing and running well, we have been exploring the relevance of the 10 commandments, which has provoked some brilliant discussions. As you may have noticed we have been looking to engage our young people in serving in our family services, in drama and worship, with a drama planned for the Christmas eve service so watch this space J

CY We’re now on week 6! How time has flown. We have a group of 8 young people, which is a mixture of our Sunday morning and Friday night young people. We meet together, eat, play games and look at a different aspects of the Gospel message each week. The course ends with a feedback form to reflect on the difference the course has made and what they may like to do next, whether that is to join our Sunday morning group or to explore confirmation or baptism.

Beauchamp CU This term we have changed our room, our publicity and started with a passion and drive to try and encourage more people to be part of the group. The numbers have already tripled and it’s going really well. We now have a leadership team made up of students and the youth workers involved and we’re looking into different mission ideas to connect with the rest of the school.

Gartree Gartree CU continues to attract a lot of young people who don’t have any connection with church, which is great. On the 1tth November the Christian band twelve twenty four are coming to the school to run a weeks mission including assemblies, RE lessons and a gig at the end of the week, Luke (OBC), Josh (St Luke’s) and I will be heavily involved with that, which is exciting.

Manor Manor CU continues to draw a variety of people from all sorts of backgrounds and religions. We have been running sessions on our identity in Christ. We have also done harvest assemblies and will be coming back to do Christmas assemblies in a few weeks time and at the end of that week, we’ll be running a “grill a Christian” lunchtime event to invite students to come and ask big questions about faith.

Please continue to pray for our young people, God has really blessed us in the last year and we pray in expectation that He can do even more

High Tea

On the afternoon of Saturday 2nd November a special afternoon tea was held in the Barnabas Centre. Margaret & Wendy have had a passion to reach out to our local community with these teas and the numbers have steadily increased through the year. Saturday's special High Tea was their way of ending the gatherings for this year and it was all hands on deck to make sandwiches, scones as well as lots of delicious cakes.

Over 50 people turned up and enjoyed the afternoon! The sandwich makers had to get busy producing more but there was more than enough to feed everyone.

During the afternoon we also celebrated Sheridan's 65th birthday.
This wasn't just afternoon tea, this was a Margaret and Wendy High Tea special!

Clearing the Grounds

This morning a team of 10 under the leadership of Mick Ellis did a clear up around the grounds of St Paul's. Their super effort resulted in 19 bags of garden waste to go off and be recycled! Thanks go to all involved and to those who provided refreshments mid morning.

Night Light's

Last night St Paul's hosted an alternative event to Halloween. Our Night Light's event was from 5.30-7.0pm and offered young people a whole vari ety of games including apple bobbing and doughnut eating. As well as craft activities with glow in the dark stickers and cake decorating there was plenty to keep everyone amused.

Our theme was Jesus the Light of the World. We sang a song called 'Let your light shine' and then were reminded that the light and love of Jesus Christ was bigger and brighter than the dark. We heard from John 8 where Jesus said he was the light of the world but also Matthew 5 where Jesus says 'You are the light of the world'. We were reminded that we are called to reflect the light and love of Jesus and share it with all the world.

We finished our celebrations with a shared tea together. Good fun was had by the 19 young people who came along. Our next Fun@4 celebration is on Sunday 8th December which follows the same format (games, craft, song, stories and food) as we think about advent and getting ready for Christmas.