Alpha Courses

St John’s will be hosting their next Alpha Course at SJ’s in the New Year. However, if you are unable to commit to evening meetings, there is an opportunity coming up to attend a course that will be running over lunchtime.

 Starting on 4 October, St Francis Church will be giving people the chance to explore the Christian faith through Alpha. The sessions will start at 12:30pm and be done by 2:30pm, to allow for the school pick up. There will be also be facilities for accompanying children. The meetings will run on a Friday with the following dates currently planned:

 4, 18, 25 October                            8, 22, 29 November

6, 13 December

 To register your interest, speak to Jon or get in direct contact with Hazel at St Francis on hazelos58@gmail.com or 020 8777 5034.

The Turning Final Update

The Turning is only a week away, and here are the final details for the programme:

7 Evenings of Worship, Prayer & Testimony

Sunday 22 September, 6:30pm @ Coney Hill Baptist

Monday 23 – Friday 27 September, 7:30pm @ Coney Hill Baptist

6 Mornings of Training & Outreach

Monday 23 – Saturday 28 September, 10am – 1pm

Monday & Tuesday @ Coney Hill Baptist

Wednesday & Thursday @ St Mary’s, Hayes

Friday & Saturday @ St Francis, West Wickham

We are looking for people to pray, be involved in the outreach on the streets, and engage in follow-up conversations with anyone who expresses a desire for that (any or all of those). There will be a sign-up sheet in church on Sunday, or if you’re not around then, send Jon an email.

Maundy Thursday

In a change from our usual Maundy Thursday activity, both Coney Hill Baptist Church and St John’s have been invited by West Wickham & Shirley Baptist to join them to see the Riding Lights Theatre Company present ‘The Narrow Road’.

 If you haven’t seen any of the Riding Lights productions you are missing out. They are one of the UK’s most successful independent theatre companies, with international renown. Amazingly, we’re being offered tickets for free, so if you’d like to come please can you sign the sheet in the Information Point.

 As an alternative, there will still be a communion service taking place at St Francis at 7pm on Maundy Thursday evening, to which there is also an open invitation.

Finding God in the Wilderness

Come and be Refreshed

Saturday 23rd March 2019 at St. John’s, 2:00-4:00pm

 This afternoon will provide an opportunity to spend quiet time with God, as part of our journey through Lent. Why not give yourself the opportunity to hear from God, experience His presence, see His beauty and quench your thirst?

 The church will be open to welcome all who would like to come - families too, with reflective activities suitable for children alongside the adult ones.

 We look forward to meeting you to celebrate God’s love for us and our love for God.

Lent Book

Believe it or not lent is fast approaching (6th March).

That means at least 2 things:

1.  You need to go and get things ready for Shrove Tuesday (aka Pancake day – 5th March - I take mine with lemon and sugar)

2. You need to make sure you’ve got yourself a copy of ‘The Resilient Disciple’ by Allain Chapman which is our lent book for 2019.

 There is a chapter for each day in lent, except Sundays as they don’t count although there is a introduction to each section the can be read on a Sunday if you get withdrawal symptoms. They are really short so only a few minutes of reading leaving plenty of time for prayer.

 For those that want to there is a lent group to discuss the book and encourage one-another at Peter’s house (7 Woodland Way) every week starting on the 13th March from 7:30 – 9pm. It is by no means compulsory but is open to everyone.

 You can get the book online at your retailer of choice for c. £7.53, although Peter has a few copies for £6 on a first come- first serve basis.

 For more info talk to Peter or call on 07803253286

ChurchSuite

No, I’m afraid it’s not a new, fancy-shmancy room installation in the church. You may recall a while back we mentioned that we hoped to move to some cloud-based, church admin software. Churchsuite is that. In slightly less technical language, this is a computer/mobile phone based system that we hope will improve our church organisation and communication.

 The intention is to use it for things like rotas, calendars, contact details and organisational communication. Further down the road, it has the capacity to be used for event bookings, payments, training modules and targeted emails. We’re all signed up and most of the database has been populated, but at this point we might need this from you:

i)      If you suspect the email address we hold is out of date – your latest contact email;

ii)    Without a GDPR Consent form for us, we can’t include you on the system.

 Please send either/both to Margaret at the Parish Office and we will shortly let you know what the next steps are for getting the system up and running.

NB The photos of the crocuses above and snowdrops and crocuses below were taken in St John’s churchyard on 14th February. They can be seen in the top part of the churchyard. A stroll up there to see them will lift your spirits.

Crocuses and snowdrops in St John’s Churchyard.

Electoral Roll Fun

You’re right – they’re probably not three words that you readily sandwich together. But we’ve reached that point in the administrative cycle when  we have to create a completely new Electoral Roll. The fun part is that everyone gets to join in – yay! No matter how many years we have been on the old roll, we all have to submit a fresh application form to appear on the new roll, so please take an application form and fill it in today (preferably), or return it the next time you come to church. Alternatively, you can give it to Paul Kingman, Jackie Barter or Geoff Batten, our three Electoral Roll Officers.

 If you are not already on the Electoral Roll, please consider adding your name. You must be baptized, at least 16 years of age (or sixteen on your next birthday), and live in the parish, or have worshipped at St. John's for at least six months.   Membership indicates you view St. John's as your spiritual home and you'd like to be involved in the shaping of our future. It gives you the right to vote at our APCM on April 28th, or to stand for election to the PCC.

Good Mental Health For All: Through All the Changing Scenes of Life

Southwark Diocese are continuing their hard work to promote awareness of mental health issues, and how we might best support one another through them.

 The above day conference will be held on Saturday 23 February, 10am-3pm at St Mildred’s Church in Addiscombe, CR0 7EB. It includes the involvement of organisations like Mind, The Children’s Society and The Association for Pastoral Care in Mental Health. It will be a great opportunity to hear from experts in the field, as well as local churches who run projects aimed at mental health and wellbeing. There will also be a market place of resources.

 If you want to book, please email – Marlene.Collins@Southwark.Anglican.Org

Discerning our Gifts

This is the next subject in our ‘Gifts’ series that Dan will be speaking about on Sunday.

 In the coming weeks, we’ll be suggesting a few different tools that are available to help us work out together what our respective gifts might be. We are also giving thought to a ‘personality test’ that we could do as a whole church – to help us get to know one another better, and understand how we each might exercise our gifts. So watch this space…

 Another aspect of this whole arena is the idea of ‘calling’. Exploring vocation often takes time and space, and so the Diocese offer regular Quiet Days to facilitate this. The next one is on 8 February, 10:00am-3:30pm. It offers a mixture of short talks, reflections, prayer and plenty of room for personal prayer and reflection on the ways in which God might be calling. If you are interested please let Jon know.

The Happiness Course

Wellbeing is a concept that is in vogue at the moment, not least of all because contentment appears to be increasingly elusive for people.

‘The Happiness Course’ hasn’t simply jumped onto the latest social trend though. It is a course designed by the Christian charity, Livability, who have been working in some of the country’s most deprived areas for a long time. Forged out of their engagement with local communities, the course encourages people to grapple with what’s really important in life to help them discover a sense of wellbeing that is deeper than a fleeting good mood.

Dawn and Penny have been on training with Livability and would like to ‘test drive’ the course with you. The plan is to run it at SJ's, 7:30-9:30 pm (coffee from 7:15 pm) on the following Thursday Evenings – 19 & 26 July, 2 & 9 August. You don’t need to attend all 4 sessions on this taster series, but if you are interested please ring or text - Penny (07912 870528) or Dawn (07985 943158).

Commissioning Amber

Amber will soon be starting her new role as our Young People & Families’ Enabler – yay!

She begins on 1 August, but before then we’d like to officially mark her taking up of this post in a 10am service. So, next weekend (15 July), we are going to dedicate part of time together to just that. We’ll have a chat with her, refresh our memories of the role she will be playing, and most importantly pray for her - that God’s Spirit will equip her for all that lies ahead.

It would be great to have as many of you there as possible to cheer her on and lend your support. If you can’t make it, please continue to hold Amber in your prayers. Starting in a fresh post is exciting, but it’s also draining adjusting to lots of ‘new’ things.

Sprung

Even if you’re not one of the lucky ones who will soon be wrestling canvas and tent poles, I hope that you are aware that our home-grown Summer Camp takes place next Friday at Downe Activity Centre.

I appreciate that if you don’t have kids going, or you’re not part of the organisational team, then it might feel hard to get too excited by it all. However, I’d encourage you to try and see it as something of real spiritual significance. These camps are more than just great fun. They often represent times when our young people take real strides in their faith, or when those on the edge of church life make a commitment to Christ. The value of those sort of things cannot be quantified, but they will only happen if the church family rallies in prayer.

So whether or not you’re going to be at Downe next weekend, you can be involved in the crucial work of praying your socks off. Pray for the leaders, the young people, our guest speakers (Anna and Josh), and most significantly that God’s Spirit would be at work in the thick of all the activity, drawing new followers to his side.

Happy Father's Day

One of my favourite stories that Jesus tells is the parable of the Prodigal Son. You’re likely to be familiar with it – it’s one of his better known yarns. I love it because for a long time I could identify with the younger son’s waywardness and his disbelief at the reaction he receives when he sheepishly returns home. As I’ve got older, and my children move into their teen years, my love for the story has not waned, but my focus has shifted more to the Father.

Which I think is probably the point!

Tim Keller, in his book, the Prodigal God reminds us that “prodigal” does not mean “wayward”, but “recklessly spendthrift” – to spend until you have nothing left. This is as appropriate for describing the Father, as it is his youngest son.  He welcomes his son back recklessly, not holding anything against him.

It challenges me as I recognise my own shortcomings as a Dad. But equally encourages me as Jesus told the story so that we might recognise the true nature of our heavenly Father. Happy Father’s Day.

A Call to Exercise...

This week we step into our new sermon series, ‘You Asked For It’.

Over the next 6-7 weeks we’ll be looking at some topics that can be emotive, and may well have been a source of pain for a number of our church family in the past. It’s healthy to acknowledge that, but we don’t want it to mean that we duck consideration of these subjects.

As we delve into them though, it will require us to sharpen our understanding of something dear to the gospel, which also has the power to soften our hearts. It is something with which Paul invariably tops and tails his letters to the churches. It can be easy to miss, but one way or another, ‘grace’ forms the bookends of all that he wishes to communicate with the people for whom he cares.

This series will cause us to consider the very nature of this ‘grace’ thing, but more than that I pray it will propel us to exercise its healing power.

One-Bit Word Game

‘Do you know the One-Bit Word Game? It’s a game where you may not use words that have more than one bit’ [syllable]. It’s a kid’s game but one that can help us be clear. When we talk of God we can use big words to make us sound smart. We can use big words – some may be in Greek – to make sure that what we say is true but when we do this we can hide the truth – make the light turn dark.

Can you tell the good news of God in one-bit words? Give it a go. It is hard! Make sure that you do not miss bits out. It’s not that we should use one-bit words all day, but it can help us drop big, smart words for clear, plain ones. It can help us think more of what the good news of God is and share it more but not with bunk words. Why not write it down and share with folk at church? Pete C would like to see too.

Is it a cinch? Then try this: How do you tell that God is one in three?

Inspired by tinyurl.com/ybg8lwrg

Wardy Summer Garden Party

Hopefully you’ve already got the date in the diary, but here are some more details. The get together will be on 10 June from 3pm, at the Rectory (30 Coney Hill Road).

For those of you who are newer to the church, it’s an open invitation - all are welcome. Feel free to bring family and friends, and you can come and go as you please through the afternoon. We’ll provide a selection of drinks, including Pimms and afternoon tea, as well as some nibbles. However, it’s as a ‘bring and share’ occasion, so if you could come with anything suitable for an afternoon feast - cakes, sandwiches or savoury nibbles - that would be great.

If you are in it for the long haul, you might want to bring something to sit on. We’ve got a few things to keep littlies amused, but no doubt sugar levels will be high, so don’t hesitate to arrive armed with your distraction tool of choice.

We look forward to seeing you.   

Church Weekend Away

Following the details we provided at the APCM about the above, we can confirm that we are fixing the date for 17-19 May 2019 (Friday evening to Sunday afternoon). The venue will the be the De Vere Horsley Estate Hotel, which you can find at https://www.phcompany.com/de-vere/horsley-estate/

Our hope is to get as much as the church family there as possible. We do not want cost to be the limiting factor, so we are inviting you to indicate whether you would like to go, irrespective of whether you think you can afford it or not.

There will be a sign up sheet in church, or you can contact Margaret at the Parish Office. Please state the names of everyone in your group and the ages of any children, what type of room you would prefer (Family, Twin, or Double), and if you would be prepared to share with someone.

Further details of the theme and speaker(s) will follow.

Reformation 500

2017 marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 theses on the door of a chapel in the German town of Wittenberg – an event that has become known as the starting point of the Reformation.

It may seem like it’s just something for those with a passion for History, but whether we are aware of it or not, it is a period that has shaped the faith we express today. Luther’s challenge to the church touched on issues of grace, repentance and forgiveness, and took on a life that affected many countries across Europe.

This Sunday, there is going to be a Churches Together celebration of this anniversary at Emmanuel at 6:30pm. It will be both a time of worship and an opportunity to discover a bit more about the impact of these old events. If you’re really keen, a good read on the subject is, ‘Why the Reformation Still Matters’, by Michael Reeves and Tim Chester.