Christingle

160 people packed into St Paul's on Christmas Eve for our Crib and Christingle service. It was great to see so many people and to be able to hear again the Christmas story. I hope you all had a great Christmas and may God bless you in 2016.

Hey Mary!

Watch this song on You Tube Hey Mary! for a retelling of the Angel's news to Mary that she was to be the mother of Jesus.

Principal Services – January - March

Happy New Year! Welcome to the start of 2016.

There is a lot happening in the next 3 months as we look at Great Prayers of the Bible and journey together through Lent and Easter. May God bless you and yours richly in 2016.

Yours In Christ,

Steve.

Service Programme

Carols by Candlelight

On Sunday night we welcomed 150 people to St Paul's for our service of Carols by Candlelight. It was great to see so many people, many of who were visiting. You are welcome to join us for any of our services. Our next one is at 4pm on Christmas eve, Crib & Christingle, perfect for families!

Supertroopers Nativity

Our fantastic Supertroopers children put on their nativity play this morning. It was excellent, great singing, lines all learnt and spoken well. Huge thanks to all involved for a super retelling of the Nativity.

Community Carol Singing

A group of us spent an hour at Sainsbury's this lunchtime singing Christmas Carols. We gave out service invites and sweets although people seemed more keen to make a donation! We raised over £55 which will be sent to the Bible Society and Embrace the Middle East. Now we are all in fine voice for our Carols by Candlelight on Sunday 20th at 7pm!

God with us

Here is a remake of one of the more famous Christmas adverts with a Christian twist. It reminds us that God is not far off, distant or uninterested in us. Rather at Christmas we remember the truth of Emmanuel, God with us. At Christmas we celebrate the greatest gift from the greatest giver. Click here to watch.

Youth on a Mission

Over the last 2 months our young people have been doing all sorts of things to bring more love and hope to this Christmas season particularly to those in need, We believe that putting the Christ into Christmas is about being Jesus to those around us. We made christmas cards and stockings, made Christmas boxes for the Samaritan's purse, helped raise money for local charities and we're currently doing an Advent Acts of kindness challenge to share more love and hope in our everyday lives and opportunities. Here are some picture and a link to the video which will show you more.

http://stpaulsoadby.moonfruit.com/youth-work-1/4586947808

School visits

Last week Foundation stage from Brookside visited St Paul's and brought their own home made decorations to hang on our tree which look lovely. They also heard the nativity story and got to explore a range of advent calendars and crib scenes.
Today Key Stage 1 came and heard the Christmas story as well as singing some carols. The year one children showed us their drawings of the nativity scene on a star, on the back they had written their favourite part of the Christmas story. Year two children had decorated a present and written on it a gift they would like to share with the world. There were many thoughtful and kind gestures including helping others, remembering the poor and spending time with family.

An exciting Sunday

St Pauls Church was packed with over 160 people at the All Age service last Sunday morning. It was a busy service with a lot going on. It was not just all age in the congregation, but all age in the music group as well.

We had the great joy of welcoming the Jones family, with their friends, for the baptism of Freya. As her parents have taken this step of faith for her, we pray that Freya may grow in a knowledge and love of Christ.

Our curate, Gillian Gamble, spoke of the giving of presents in general – a feature of life at Christmas time – with lots of interaction with the congregation (particularly the younger members) about their favourite presents. But she also spoke about Jesus, the baby at Bethlehem, as the greatest gift of all. But Jesus was not given just as a gift for Christmas; he wants to know our love, and to give us his love, all through the year.

This was also a gift service, when the congregation brought up toys they had bought specially as presents for children in refuges and homeless hostels. Gift were also brought up to be used by the Welcome Project as gifts for asylum seekers.

This was the first of the Sunday services relating especially to Christmas. We continue next Sunday at 7.0 pm with our Carols by Candlelight Service. Everyone is very welcome.

Gifts

One of the organisations that we will be helping at our Gift Service is Action Homeless. As they say: “we provide accommodation for around 100 people every night of the year at our ten supported housing projects. One of our projects, Bridge House, offers safe and welcoming accommodation for women and children who are fleeing domestic violence. Many of the families we work with have had to leave their homes with nothing and come to Bridge House to start the process of rebuilding their lives."

Pray for the homes where mothers and children are safeguarded to avoid violence. We will be sending them gifts to suit the children they are currently dealing with, so we pray that we get the details right and that every child gets something appropriate.

We pray for their protection and for the coming year.

And we pray too for solutions to the problems the mothers face.

Let the Light Shine!

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness
    a light has dawned. Isaiah 9;2

Derek Bowering, who leads our Super Troopers (the Sunday School) has a wonderful ability to produce visual aids that illustrate Christian truths for the children. This Sunday, he provided the main materials for each child to make a manger, with a low voltage electric circuit, to illustrate the Christmas story. Only when a piece of wood carved with the name "God" was in place, did a star (lamp) light up the scene, to show that it was the presence of Jesus, God made man, in the stable that made the difference – he is the light of the world.

The verse associated with this was Isaiah 9:2 

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.

Whenever Derek is on duty, he provides some similar model. One child has kept all of those that he has received on a shelf in his bedroom.

We are so grateful for Derek's ingenuity and for the time that he is willing to spend to help children understand God better.

It's That Time of Year!

 We're waiting, with excitement, for Christmas – the reminder that God came as a baby to Bethlehem, to live among us and to die on Good Friday. So, this becomes a season of Carol Services. The Parkinsons Society, who use our buildings to hold their meetings have already had their service. Then, last Thursday, the Coffee Pot group held theirs. It was led by our vicar, Steve Bailey, and Kate Potter kindly played the organ for the carols.

After a light-hearted retelling of the Christmas story, using some horrendous puns relating to the names of sweets, Steve reminded us of the importance of Christ's coming to Earth in order to die for our sins.

Between every two rows of chairs, there had been a table decorated for Christmas. At the end of the service, one of the two rows was turned round so that we could meet around the table for coffee and mince pies.

The church's Main Carol Service (by candlelight) will be at 7 PM on Sunday 19 December. Everyone is very welcome. 

Baby Jesus handbagged

Baby Jesus handbagged

Christmas Starts with Christ have made a parody of one of the many adverts and cleverly asks "what are you worshipping"