Thursday 14 October 2021

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I look forward to seeing many of you on Sunday. It will be lovely to have some of the families and children with us and we will be offering Junior Church and crèche.

We now have all 50 seats booked. If you have booked a seat and you are unable to come please let me know on 077 495 7419 so that I can offer the seat to anyone else who may ask for one.

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.

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. The second session of the course will be on Tuesday 19th. Please let me know if you would like to attend as the numbers are limited.
If would like to look at some of the material yourself you can find it at the Living in Love and Faith Learning Hub.

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 have put up a temporary simple wooden cross in the garden. Thank you to Brian for doing this. 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.

Christmas Bazaar: Friday 26th and Saturday 27th November
Plans have already started for this. We still need volunteers to help with setting up and running various stalls. If you are able to help, please be in touch with Maria in the office. Thank you.

I end with two prayers we used at the Living in Love and Faith session on Tuesday:

O Holy Spirit,
Giver of light and life,
impart to us thoughts higher than our own thoughts,
and prayers better than our own prayers,
and powers beyond our own powers,
that we may spend and be spent
in the ways of love and goodness,
after the perfect image
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen

Lord Jesus,
write the story of your grace and truth
into the lives of your people
that, believing in you,
the world may have life in your name.
Amen

With love in Christ,
Helen