Parish Jottings

A peaceful Christmas?

Our church was a busy place in Advent and over Christmas. On the evenings of 8^th, 9^th and 10^th December and again on the morning of Saturday 11^th a succession of families walked through a transformed churchyard and church, meeting wise men, King Herod, shepherds, angels and an innkeeper before arriving at the stable (with live donkeys on Saturday). On the way they heard the Christmas story. “Follow the Star” was, for the second year, an enormous success, reaching out to many people who don’t normally come to church. Then, in the run up to Christmas Day we had two Christingle Services and two Candlelit Carol Services as well as normal worship; and on Christmas Day, Midnight Communion, an All Age Service followed by Christmas Communion. We have had complaints from the church mice, whose peace and quiet enjoyment of their home was ruined by all the noise and activity.

Return of live music

January saw a welcome return of live music to our 10:00 a.m. services. For some years now we have made do with recorded accompaniment to our hymn singing but Sam Brewster is now bringing his guitar when he can and leads one or two songs this way. If there are any instrumentalists in our congregation who would like to make up an occasional music group, please let us know, we’d love to hear from you. Concert level standard not required, just a desire to worship through music.

Flowers

Flower arranging in church too is an act of worship but since our much-admired flower arranging team retired we have struggled to follow their example. Happily our neighbour Anne Sanders has kindly come to our aid and produced a wonderful bouquet of flowers for the podium over Christmas. We are most grateful to her.

Frantic Fridays

If it’s some years since you came to the church on a Friday you will probably have a surprise if you do so now. On a Friday morning you will find all the chairs swept aside and a range of children’s play equipment around an open space in the middle of the nave; and the church packed with mums (and some dads), toddlers and babies. This is Junior Jivers run by Lucie Brewster, Peter Greenman and Kryssie Steiger and is very popular with both church members and non churchgoers and is a key element in our outreach to local families. If you come instead in the afternoon you’ll probably run into Families on Fridays, an after-school club for parents and school aged children run by Peter and Kryssie; a more recent but growing outreach activity. And just to round off the day, every other week, Trinity at Four hold Friday Night Youth, a youth club for teenagers run by Sam and Erin Kennedy with help from Kryssie. This one is not in the church building, to the great relief of the church mice who have had a terrible day and deserve some peace.

Signs of spring on sunny side of Holy Trinity church (2017)