Thy Kingdom Come

Churches are coming together between the 10-20th May 2018 to pray for God’s kingdom to come and for hearts to be turned to Jesus, and we at St. John’s are joining in. Here are a few events we are running to help you pray:

• 10th – 8pm, prayer at church
• 13th – 6pm, Prayer drive, start at church
• 13th and 20th - 9:15am, prayer before the service for 30 mins

We will also be providing some resources to help you pray for your family, friends and work colleagues during the event. We will be letting you know more about this before the 10th.

• Shoelace prayers
• Work prayer cards
• Online scripture and prayer resources

Other churches in our area will also be running events. Here is one we have already been invited to join in with.

• 10th-11th, 14th-18th, 9:30am. Weekday morning prayer at Coney Hill Baptist Church for an hour.

For more info ask the prayer team or visit: www.thykingdomcome.global

Gravetalk

Is a Church of England initiative to help encourage people talk about the subject that most of us avoid – death and dying. The idea is to provide a café space to talk around this subject, give people a chance to think about their funeral and generally air their thoughts.

We’ve joined with St Francis & St Mary’s to run Gravetalk at Corza Café on West Wickham High Street. Details are contained on the postcard you should have received at church. We are doing a trial run this Tuesday at 7:30pm, which is designed for those in the church. A free buffet will be provided (a mix of hot and cold nibbles) and we’ll be encouraging people to buy their own drinks. It’s an opportunity to see how it works and for you to provide feedback in readiness to going live for the evening of 24 May, which will be for the whole community.  

We appreciate its short notice, but it would be great to have as many of you there as possible. If you could let Margaret know if you can make it, that will help us keep a track of numbers. 

Marriage Resource Closes

As faithful supporters of Marriage Resource we wanted to share this news with you as a season changes.

The work of supporting couples and training will continue in different ways, without the overhead of Marriage Resource, a registered charity. The couple-to-couple marriage support will continue under St John’s with Mike and Sue Watson heading up this work, with Barry and Chrissy supporting. If there are couples you know who may need support in the future, please contact us or the church office. Barry and Chrissy will continue to train trainers for Pastoral Care UK so that marriage support can flourish around the UK and abroad.

We wanted to take this opportunity to say a massive THANK YOU to God and our St John’s family for their faithful and generous support of us and Marriage Resource over the last 18 years.

Prayer & Healing Service

We like to provide space for people to receive prayer for anything on any given Sunday.

 However, it feels timely to hold a complete service directed towards prayer and specifically, an opportunity to receive prayer for healing and wholeness. Our time together will include some teaching and sung worship, but will offer plenty of space for people to ‘Be Still and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46: 10). There is something special about coming together as a church family in faith in this way, so we encourage you to put the date in your diary now – Sunday 1 October, 6:30pm.

 ‘But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness

will rise with healing in its wings.’

Malachi 4: 2

'Children & Youth Review' Update

We hope you are aware that the PCC recently considered the main findings that emerged from feedback we received across our children’s and youth groups. If you wish to see the headlines from the responses, we have posted them on the church noticeboards. One of the immediate challenges is to find leaders to replace those stepping down from 14 plus and Club 2000. We are having discussions with people about this, but if you feel you might be able to help in the future in a supportive capacity (rather than overall leadership), then do have a chat with Jon, as we need more helpers.

A natural conclusion from the review is that our work with children and young people cannot flourish in its existing format without someone who has the dedicated time to oversee it. The PCC are agreed that we must act now. We need to decide whether we employ someone to this end, and so an extraordinary meeting of the PCC has been called to pray into this and arrive at some conclusions. We will keep you posted as this unfolds, but in the meantime the leadership values your prayers and welcomes any insights you may wish to share.