Church Blog
News, Updates, Thoughts

On Wednesday 27th October at 7.30pm, Abby Roper from St Barnabas is giving a talk for Yateley Society on the history of St Barnabas Church.

We have agreed to host them in the church and they would love people from the congregations to come along to join them for the evening.

Please come along if you can!

We are looking to start a new initiative with Charles Kingsley School, which we will also hopefully be rolling out with our link schools in Darby Green soon:

What?

Twice a week – on a Tuesday and a Friday – a small group of volunteers from the church will hang around the school playground wearing church clothing from shortly before to just after school pickup time to engage the parents and children in conversation.

Why?

During the pandemic, and even before, many parents will come to the school gate at pick up time needing to talk to someone about things which are happening in their lives.  Often these conversations have ended up with parents talking to teachers.

The idea of the Playground Pastors would be to offer a listening ear and a friendly face for people to come and talk to about whatever is going on.  The conversations may be mundane to begin with, but as people get to know us they will feel able to share more important things.

Who?

Anyone who can listen.  We aren’t looking for people who are especially skilled or trained in either pastoral care or evangelism – instead we’d love a few people who would be willing to be available to people and engage people in conversation.  Primarily this is for the parents rather than the children, but inevitably they will engage with you too. 

When?

Ideally we would love to get 6-12 people who would be willing to do either once a week or once a fortnight.  The time commitment is only from 2.30 – 3.30pm on either a Tuesday or a Friday and we would offer some basic training beforehand.  We would like to start in November if possible.

If you want to know more, or think you could get involved please contact me.

Our Christmas appeal will again support the work of the Christian charity Link to Hope.

Link to Hope’s vision is that one day every person in Eastern Europe will have a safe environment to live in and access to basic healthcare, human rights, employment and education.  To enable as many people as possible to help with the effort there are several options for the Shoebox Appeal this year.

YOU FILL A SHOEBOX

Link to Hope accept Family and Elderly Shoeboxes.  They request for similar items to be put in each and every box as they have found that the recipients really appreciate those items which meet their most immediate, and mostly practical, needs.  Please download the Shoebox Leaflet 2021 and follow the instructions.  If you are unable to download the form please collect a copy from the porch of St. Mary’s Church.

The Shoebox Appeal Launch will be at St. Mary’s Messy Church at 4pm on Sunday 17th October – and you would be welcome to bring a completed box then. However, we will be formally collecting completed shoeboxes at our 10am service at St. Mary’s on Sunday 24th October. 

LINK TO HOPE FILL A SHOEBOX

This year if you don’t have time or are unable to fill a shoebox, Link to Hope will do it for you.

DONATE TO THE SHOEBOX APPEAL

Help towards the costs of the Shoebox Appeal and enable Link to Hope to send even more shoeboxes by making a donation.

SEND ITEMS FOR A SHOEBOX

Order items in bulk and send direct to Link to Hope or shop from the Amazon Wish List.

We thank you in advance for your help and generosity.

We’re once again able to leave St. Mary’s open for visitors who might want space to pray, be interested in its history and architecture, or just be curious as they walk past on the public footpath.

From this week it will be open during the day on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

We will open on other days of the week if we get more volunteers to unlock and lock up.

If you can help, please let me know.

From Sunday, 3rd October, we are hoping to restart a regular pattern of services and activities for children and young people in both our churches.

The pattern will generally look like this:

For our Harvest Festivals on 26th September this year, both our churches will be supporting 2 charities:

Hart Foodbank has been at the forefront of our ministry for years, supporting local people who have reached crisis point with food, cleaning materials, and encouragement.

Food.gives is an international foodbank project from the Barnabas Fund, a charity which supports persecuted Christians around the world.  Because they are sending food overseas, they have a very specific list of food items which are the only items which the Barnabas Fund are able to accept.

• Wheat flour
• Rice
• Lentils (dried) For gives PLEASE ONLY collect dried food (not tins), and
• Chick Peas (dried) ENSURE the items do not contain liquid, oil, or animal products.
• Soap (bars)
• Salt

The Barnabas Fund is sending us 30 food boxes which we will then hopefully fill and send back to them and I am hoping between the churches and schools we can fill these, and perhaps a few more as well.  The cost of getting a food box into the hands of a recipient is approximately £4, so alongside our physical gifts, we would love to provide financially to this project to help with the logistical costs as well as for Hart Foodbank. Therefore we will be having a collection at each Harvest Festival Service and at our Harvest Afternoon Tea at St Barnabas.

Following the latest set of guidance from the Church of England for the move to stage 4 of the Governments Covid roadmap, which was issued on Friday JUly 16th, we have taken the decision to continue with outside worship wherever practical for the next few weeks to ensure we can do things as safely as possible.

Given the current high number of cases both locally and nationally, we will continue to ask people to socially distance wherever reasonably possible, and to wear masks indoors.  We will also continue to use individual cups for communion.

However in a change to the previous guidance, we will be allowed to have indoor singing with masks, should the service need to be indoors.

Many people will feel comfortable moving back to closer contact with others following the relaxing of the rules, however, equally as many people will want to maintain distancing and reduce the risk of transmission as much as possible to keep themselves and others safe so we do ask that everyone respect this as we want as many people as possible to feel comfortable coming to the services.

We will be looking in more detail at the guidance over the next week or so and carrying out a full risk assessment.  Hopefully once we have completed this we will be able to reintroduce some other aspects of our shared life together such as refreshments after the services and other activities.

We will review the situation again towards the end of the summer.

Blessings

In the past we have had a cleaning rota for which had to fall into abeyance during lockdowns. I am hoping to resurrect it from September, all being well.

Cleaning would take place once a fortnight on a rota basis hopefully in pairs. The more people from the community willing to do this, the less often each will appear on the rota.

I will try and initiate a checklist too, so that folk know what to look at, but it will be largely dusting, pews and floors. There is a hoover and cleaning materials at church.

If you are willing and able to help, whether or not you’ve done this in the past, please can you contact me.

It was announced on Friday 16th July, that Bishop Tim would be retiring in February 2022.

You can listen to his message on YouTube.