Wednesday 29 September 2021

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

This Sunday, 3rd October, we will be celebrating our Harvest Festival and Pledge Sunday. This is always a joyful and colourful occasion. If you are able to, please bring fruit, vegetables and tins to decorate the church. These will be taken to the Passantenhilfe afterwards. We also invite you to bring your pledge forms, as an offering of thankfulness and commitment to support the work of the church.

We welcome any money raised through the Creation Season Challenge. This money, together with the collection taken at the service, will go to support Tearfund Schweiz Kigezi Diocese Water and Sanitation Project in Uganda. This is a project Junior Church has supported for some years.

This Sunday, we are also celebrating the baptism of Joanna Babatunde. Please keep her, and her parents, Bolu and Adiza, in your prayers. We are delighted that the children and families will be with us on Sunday and we will be offering Junior Church and creche. Families and children will be given the priority for seats.

If you are unable to be in church with us you can follow the service online at:Service Resources at St Ursula's Church, Berne We are all very thankful to Hector, Martin and Art for making this possible.

COVID certificates
We have to check these for any events in the church or hall with over 30 people. For services, we can have up to 50 people without checking certificates. Council will be discussing the best way forward and I will let you know in due course. For now, we are keeping attendance at all services to under 50 people.

Living in Love and Faith
The Church of England has asked all churches to run a 5 week course exploring identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage from a Christian perspective. We will be running this course in church, 7 - 8.30pm, Tuesdays, 12th, 19th, 26th October and 16th, 23rd November.

Meetings will include watching some video presentations and also spending some time for discussion in small groups.

This course is open to members of St Ursula's. If you would like to come, please register with me or with the office as we need to know numbers.

Anyone is welcome to look at the information online at the Living in Love and Faith Learning Hub: Here you will find a wealth of material including books and articles, videos of personal stories, Biblical study, reflection on science and society.

I encourage those who can to come along to the course. The intention of the course is not to push a particular agenda but to allow space to listen to God and to one another and to reflect on these issues in the light of scripture, tradition, reason and experience. There will be a wide range of views amongst us, but it is important that we listen carefully and respectfully to everyone. The facilitators of the small groups will seek to make sure this happens.

Above all, please pray for these sessions and all taking part; for grace, respect, humility and openness to the Spirit.

Large Cross in the Church Garden
The gardening team are proposing that we put up a large cross in the church grounds, as an aid to reflection and prayer and as a witness to the wider community. The council will be considering this proposal.

To help us do make this decision, we will be putting up a temporary simple wooden cross in the garden in the next few weeks. A permanent cross would not necessarily be of the same design or materials but it will give us an idea of what it would be like to have such a cross in the church grounds. We will leave the temporary cross up for a couple of months so that we all have time to get used to the idea. We will then welcome feedback from the congregation.

As we celebrate harvest and all God's good gifts to us, we might want to ponder the final verse of the traditional harvest hymn, We plough the fields and scatter:

We thank thee then, O Father,
for all things bright and good,
the seed-time and the harvest,
our life, our health, our food.
Accept the gifts we offer
for all thy love imparts,
and, what thou most desirest,
our humble, thankful hearts.
  All good gifts around us
  are sent from heaven above;
  then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord,
  for all his love.

(M Claudius)

May God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is the source of all goodness and growth,
pour his blessing upon all things created,
and upon you his children,
that you may use his gifts to his glory
and the welfare of all peoples.
Amen.

With love in Christ,
Helen