Please book the evening of Friday 21st September 2018 into your diaries, as this will be the evening when Rev Mark Robinson is inducted to the South West Hants Group. The Induction Service will be at Chandler’s Ford United Reformed Church, starting at 7.30pm. It will be preceded by light refreshments from 6.30pm. Please let an elder know if you will require transport.
Mark’s wife, Rev Tessa Robinson, will be ordained and inducted to the East Southampton pastorate the following day.
What are your gifts?
How do you share them?
Sometimes we think our gifts are too humdrum to be much use to other people, but this is just not true.
Look again at these well-known verses from 1 Corinthians 12 in
“The Message” version:
“You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your “part” mean anything. You’re familiar with some of the parts that God has formed in his church, which is his “body”:
Apostles, prophets, teachers, miracle workers, healers, helpers, organizers, those who pray in tongues.”
The Church also supports Christian Aid and its work through the URC’s partner organisation Commitment For Life, and in particular this Church has been supporting ongoing work in Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador).
Central America has high levels of economic inequality. Christian Aid’s regional approach works because of the close economic, social and political ties between the four countries, leading to coherent programming, links between partners and other allies across the region, and shared learning.
Following the success of the Preach With A View service there was a request for another joint service. Following discussion at Elders and at Church Meeting this was endorsed by those present. Therefore as an experiment (it is not intended that we do this very often) all our group congregations will be meeting at Avenue St Andrews for morning worship on July 8th at 10.30am. Please support this service.
This year’s Christian Aid Week will be from 13th to 19th May 2018. Please do support the work of this charity by giving generously. A place of particular focus in this year’s materials is Haiti and the endeavours to build up resilience in communities here that are amongst the poorest in the World and endangered by extreme weather and natural events.
As usual envelopes will be available in Church for donations on both Sundays 13th and 20th May. UK taxpayers are encouraged to complete the attached section so that Christian Aid can reclaim gift aid, which adds significantly to donations by taxpayers.
Many Haitian homes have been flimsily constructed. Christian Aid has been helping to build or rebuild houses in Haiti that were damaged or destroyed by earthquake and hurricane winds.