At our Harvest Festival we were able to announce that we had met the criteria to be a Silver Eco-Church. We are pleased to display the badge. However, the commitment to be good stewards does not rest, and we will continue to maintain good habits and learn more.
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. … God saw all that had been made, and it was very good.”
I’m writing this the morning after the Election Hustings. You should read it before the General Election, although those with postal votes may have already voted.
I did enjoy the hustings. I wasn’t sure if I would, it’s always difficult when you organise something to know how it will all come together, especially when it’s organised by e-mails and the various ways that people respond (or don’t respond) to e-mail. We didn’t know if anyone would come, or if the format – which we knew was unfamiliar, would work. In the end we had around 100 people engaged in thinking about the political future of the town and country, we had a format that gave the candidates an opportunity to engage in conversations with people, as well as make their points from the platform. We covered a whole range of issues that I felt gave us a chance to hear candidates views on local, national and ethical issues and see the way they handled each.
I find choosing who to vote for tricky because I want to vote for a person who will be a good constituency MP, as well as think about which party I would prefer to form the government. I look at the official party manifesto, trying to get a sense for which one is closest to my own thinking, but sometimes find myself drawn in to a vote against a party or trying to work out which are least bad options. Sometimes I have voted for policies I want, even though I know they have no chance of winning and in one local election I voted for policies I didn’t particularly agree with because I liked the candidate and wanted to encourage their approach towards local people. Hence why I’ve always found hustings useful to see how each candidate responds to that complicated mix of factors. Last night I was pleased to see that the candidates engaged well with people and in particular that those most likely to become Loughborough’s MP will (I think) be a good constituency MP whatever their party policies.
Finally, I will pray. For our faith and our politics can not be neutral. They inform one another and they should always be in a deep informative conversation.
A General Election Prayer
May love surround our discussions;
May love inform our policies;
May love organise our debate.
May prayer uphold our campaigning;
May prayer enlighten our opinion;
May prayer determine our mark.
May our votes be cast for kindness;
May our votes be cast for truthfulness;
May our votes be cast in love.
Be blessed
Craig
Once again we are involved in Loughborough in Bloom, taking a pride in looking after our premises and uplifting those who use the building or live nearby. It is a labour of love and we often find people sitting quietly on the bench enjoying the scene. Each garden will be viewed by the organising committee. Our date is Monday 5th August when we hope to give a good account of ourselves. If you feel you could become involved please see Hilary or Phyllis. Many hands make a light work (or garden blossom). Many thanks to Hilary, Alan, Phyllis and Christine. Your work is so appreciated.
I spent six years of my childhood in a village called Cheadle Hulme. I say village, but at the time we lived there it was growing into the suburb of Stockport/Manchester that it is today. I was recently reminded of those days when I spotted a group called “Growing Up in Cheadle Hulme” and people sharing memories of their childhoods. I found one person who is now a member at Melton, another who lived in the same house as us before we did and pictures from my school – newly built in 1966, when I went in the first intake. At that time the whole area was a building site, and a few of us were remembering playing in the partly built houses, turning piles of sand into Long Jump pits, and being free to roam.
Of course, the temptation is for those of an earlier era to look back with rose-tinted glasses at the freedoms we had and despair at the way children are raised today. But we have been part of that changing society – we know from experience that a building site is not a safe place for 8 year olds, and we have filled those almost empty roads with cars, and we know that even back then there were nasty people around taking advantage of children given freedom to roam or entrusted into the care of youth organisations. So, now, Safeguarding needs to be on every agenda.
What has not changed, is the idea that it takes a village to raise a child, even if the methods used are slightly different. If we want children of today to have good memories to look back on and to build their adult lives upon, we each need to take responsibility for the world they are growing up in and be part of making good memories. I’m sure one of the things that has held me in church is that I have good childhood memories of the various places we worshipped, communities where I was included, encouraged, given freedom to grow and develop as a follower of Jesus. I give thanks for the people who created that culture – even if nowadays, I can’t remember their names!
We are not a church that has any regular children worshipping with us but we are a church that has lots of children coming into our building (Brownies, Guides, WWW, Grub Club, Dance, Theatre, Judo, Kumon) they are each an integral part of the life of this village. I would love to find more ways to connect those who are here on a Sunday with those here through the rest of the week. And to feel comfortable saying to those families, “Sunday is also for you.” Or creating new worship times that would encourage new connections. But I know that for that to be so, we need to make some changes so that such an intention might become possible. A book I’m reading at the moment says, “We believe that God is calling us to be an intergenerational church; a church that intentionally brings the generations together in mutual serving, sharing or learning within … core activities … in order to live out being the Body of Christ.”
How might we be being called to grow this church across the generations and what are each of us who belong to this church today, prepared to contribute to seeing that come to fruition?
Be blessed, Craig
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Safeguarding: and whilst talking about Safeguarding – for young, old, client or worker, a reminder that our Safeguarding Co-ordinator is Una Hubbard, the Deputy is Daphne Beale and on safeguarding matters they should be contacted on safeguarding@loughboroughurc.co.uk
| June Calendar | ||
| Sunday 2nd | 10:30am | Sunday worship led by Richard Eastman |
| Tuesday 4th | 2:00pm | Tuesdays@2. |
| Thursday 6th | 2:00pm | Elders’ Meeting |
| 4:00pm | Prayers@4 | |
| Friday 7th | 10:30am | Bible Study; Joshua 4 in Blue Room or via Zoom Meeting ID: 893 0123 3247 Passcode: 772397 |
| Sunday 9th | 10:30am | Communion Service led by Craig Muir |
| Wednesday 12th | 10:30am | Nature & Nurture join us for a walk at Outwoods. |
| Sunday 16th | 10:30am | Worship led by Daphne Beale |
| Tuesday 18th | 10:00am | Tuesday Bible Study: Esther, via Zoom, contact Geetha for link |
| 2:00pm | Tuesdays@2. A social time in the Vestibule in which we share cakes and chat. | |
| 4:00pm | Prayers@4 | |
| Friday 21st | 10:30am | Bible Study; Joshua 5 Blue room or Zoom as above |
| Sunday 23rd | 10:30am | Worship led by Mike Playdon |
| Thursday 27th | 4:00pm | Grub Club Volunteers Briefing |
| 7:00pm | Church Meeting | |
| Sunday 30th | 10:30am | Worship led by Craig Muir |
| 12:15 | Picnic with LBC and Trinity in Queens Park | |
| July Calendar | ||
| Tuesday 2nd | 2:00pm | Tuesdays@2. |
| 2:30pm | Choir Practice (please check nearer time) | |
| 4:00pm | Prayers@4 | |
| Sunday 7th | 10:30am | Sunday worship led by Mike Playdon |
| Tuesday 9th | 2:30pm | Choir Practice (please check nearer time) |
| Thursday 11th | 2:00pm | Elders’ Meeting |
| Friday 12th – 15th | URC General Assembly | |
| Sunday 14th | 10:30am | Communion Service led by Daphne Beale |
| Saturday 27th | 2:00-4:00pm | Manse Open House |
Church life seems to have always been a mix of religious and social. Some of you may even remember the days when all social life revolved around the church and you couldn’t get away from the place! Many people have life-long friendships that began in church, which is wonderful, so long as these friendships also make space for new people to join in and make their own contribution. At the same time churches are (or should be) places of prayer and worship, places where we encourage one another to follow Jesus and to learn what it is to follow the way of Jesus. Often the social life, can attract someone into church life and they discover Jesus – others come seeking Jesus and discover a great group of people with whom to belong.
There is nothing new about this. We are told that in the early church “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the Temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” You see that mix of the religious and the social at the heart of their life together.
So, we are trying to get a sense of the right mix of social and religious fellowship at our church – and when and how that is best done. One of the places we have tried to mix some social and some prayer time is Open Church on a Thursday morning – but it is often the faithful few who attend and that can be a bit dis-spiriting. So, we have been asking around – some don’t like the prayer/social mix and would prefer a definite prayer time and a more conventional coffee morning. Some don’t like the morning – and would prefer the afternoon, and of course others have just got other things they want to be doing and will never want to meet at church on a week day.
So let me list some options –
1 Keep things as they are.
2 Prayers in church at 10:15 am on Thursday, Coffee Morning in Vestibule (around tables from 10:30am-12noon)
3 Coffee Morning in Vestibule on Thursday 10:30am – 12noon, Prayers in Church at 12 noon.
4 Tea and Cake in Vestibule on Thursday 2:00pm – 4:00pm
5 Tea and Cake in Vestibule 2:00pm -4:00pm another day in the week. (Bearing in mind that the choir practice is on Tuesdays and Nature & Nurture walks tend to use Wednesday.)
6 Midweek Prayers at some other time, but probably before or after the Tea & Cake.
7 Stop having a regular midweek gathering.
We will look at these options at our Church Meeting on 28 September, but it would be useful to narrow down the options before that. So please contact myself or Daphne to let us know your own thoughts and we will feed those into the discussion.
In the meantime, I wonder what Bible story I can share about cakes. It could be Ezekial’s Barley cake baked over human dung, or it could be David’s revival of an Egyptian left behind by a raiding party “They gave him bread and he ate; they gave him water to drink; they also gave him a piece of fig cake and two clusters of raisins. When he had eaten, his spirit revived; for he had not eaten bread or drunk water for three days and three nights.” That seems like a good way to share cake – even if it did lead to the raiding party being discovered and destroyed. We promise to be much friendlier and eat cake in peace.
be blessed
Craig
Dear Friends
For some time now we have been frustrated by our attempts to provide a live video of our Sunday Morning service for those who need to worship with us from home. Zoom has been inadequate and we do not have the right equipment to use any other platform. – or to be able to record and save a video to our website.
The Church Meeting in July agreed that we should go ahead with installing the right equipment to allow us to produce good quality streaming of our service, We know this is important for those who are housebound, but it is also good to be able to offer for funerals, weddings and other occasions where people want to or need to join from home. In addition, the ability to save our recording so that it can be viewed on the website at a different time can be a good way of advertising – some people do like a “sneak peak”.
In talking through our needs we also realised that it was a good opportunity to upgrade the microphone cables, speakers in church and most importantly the sound desk to a digital model that will output good quality sound, but can also have a number of presets – making it fiddle proof. The cost is a little bit more than we anticipated at Church Meeting, however the Elders have agreed to go ahead with the work to ensure that we are ready to begin in the Autumn.
The total cost will be £12,500. We have that money available in our Legacy Fund because of those who remembered the church in their wills. However, Church Meeting also felt that as we are needing to use our reserves (including the Legacy Fund) to supplement our regular income, that we should put out an appeal to members to recover some of these costs from amongst ourselves.
I do hope some of us will feel able to support this project and if you feel that you would like to make a contribution then the easiest way would be by Bank Transfer into our usual account
Sort Code 601410
A/c no 89245423
with a Reference AVFUND.
Otherwise a cheque to church For the Attention of Peter Rippon.
Be blessed
Craig Muir
Peter Rippon
