Upcoming Events, including Healing Service

This coming Sunday (June 7th), the usual 10am service (for Trinity Sunday) will be followed at 2pm by a double baptism for Emily and Joseph and then at 4pm by a Healing Service.
This is a gentle, quiet service of prayer, in particular for healing for us, and a particular part of our lives. These can be lovely, but also powerful. You can come for others or just for yourself.

Just before that, on Saturday 6th, at 5pm, our young people will be taking on St Bart's at Ultimate Frisbee . Should be fun.

Further out, look out for the Welcome afternoon on Saturday 13th, from 2.30pm to 4.30pm. Come just to check us out: we'll have a bouncy castle and a few other entz, but also some presentations about what we do as a Church. All welcome, especially, if you haven't been to us much before.

In the meantime, progress on The Chapel on the Hill . We should have a postcode by the end of this week. Would you believe it's taken 9 phone calls since the application to get through to the relevant person, leaving message after message, but I believe we're finally there. Once that's in, we can get on to the refuse collection list and also get the internet connection installed!
It's slow, it's largely tedious, but it's the sort of thing that needs to happen if this building is to be creatively used by the whole community, for the glory of God.
Which is what will surely happen, in time.

Also, the PCC meeting this Thursday (4th) will take place in the Chapel.
Hey, hey!

Father Robert

Pentecost, curried goat, marriage prep, walking on water...

Coming Up:
Pentecost. This Sunday (May 31st), 10am, a fantastic service. It's like the Church's birthday service, marking the fact that the Holy Spirit was for ALL PEOPLES. Something special.

Also coming up: our early summer Marriage Preparation course. The first evening was last night: it continues with a different group tonight and then everyone together on Saturday (may 30th) . Run By Father John and Reverend Sheila.
The next one will be in July.

If you like drama, come on Thursday, Friday or Saturday night to see "Twelve Angry Men (jurors)"
http://www.st-georges-players.org.uk
See their website above for more details. Tickets are around £6, and the stage is being put up in church as I write: staged in the round for the first time ever in a Players production, it promises to be fantastic. I'm really looking forward to seeing it on the Friday night.

The Chapel on the Hill progresses. it looks like our electrics have been commissioned, which is great news.

Jeremiah and Winifred will be getting married this Friday in the afternoon.

As for curried goat, in the title to this blog, that was about Tony's birthday. Tony is our graphics man. If you see our logo on this site, or many other things, then his hand has probably been on them one way or another.
It was his 70th birthday last week and he celebrated with... curried goat after church.
I missed it, I was in the Lake District (see photo, more on which later.) But I thought there was something great about that, that a sensible Englishman would celebrate his birthday with curried goat. He had the idea when Enid came round to our Men's group to show us how to make curry. And that's a bit of Pentecost in a way. Different cultures joining up. And I hope our church is part of that. It's amazing the nationalities represented in our congregation, just as they are in our parish.
Anyway, you can read more about Tony and his latest project on his website.
http://web.me.com/tony.gibbs2/Sterling_T26_/Home.html

Finally, why the photo?
Well, I was just on holiday in the Lake District last weekend and I felt inspired by Jesus on the Sea of Galilee. Impressed?
Father Robert
PS It wasn't really a miracle.

Ascension, Thursday 8pm and new church wardens

There's a major service this Thursday evening (21st May) at 8pm, celebrating the Ascension, the time when Jesus completed his work on earth and returned 'to the right hand of the father'.

It will be a peaceful eucharist (though with good music too).

Do join us. I'll be preaching (but don't let that put you off...)

Here's a photo of the baptism from last Sunday's service, kindly sent by the photographer, John Whitfield (www.johnwhitfieldphotography.com).

It was a double baptism: there's Kyan, who's 2, in the suit, who's just been baptised seconds before, watching his little sister, Nyah, get baptised. Parents Chi and Odili look on. I love the look on Kyan's face: so interested. You can just seem him questioning what's happening in his eyes.

And the guy on my right, assisting, is Martin.

He and Ian C were sworn in as churchwardens for the year at Southwark Cathedral on Monday. It was a good service and it was really interesting to hear their formal responsibilities. Things like keeping the churchyard in decent order and ensuring dignity and lack of disruption at times of holy worship. The words sounded old: I suspect they've been the same for centuries.

It's a really significant job, being a warden. On the surface, it's often about fabric and functional things, but really they keep an eye on the wellbeing of the church as a whole. We're very lucky to have them. (And Graham did a great job before, too.) In the title, I say "new churchwardens": that's not exactly right as they've both been wardens before, but it is their new term of office.

Father Robert

Easter garden, last chance to see...

Every year, our baptistry is turned into an Easter garden.

You can see it on the left: John is at the side. It's just before Morning Prayer last week.

Praying in front of it is wonderful. The flowers team with life and everywhere there's new symbolism. The empty tomb most obviously, but the olive trees, the nails from the cross, the flowers still bursting into life. We'll keep it there till the end of the Easter season, but that's only a couple of weeks away, so it'll end then.

Come and see it before it finishes.

In the middle is the font, where this Sunday there will be three more baptisms: Kyan and Nyah in the morning, and Eva in the afternoon. A beautiful place for a new Christian life to begin.

Meantime, a salute to the cubs and cub leaders who had a tremendously successful camp last week. (I will hope to post on that more, when I get hold of the pictures for you to see.)

And look out for our parish quiz night, this coming Saturday night: 7 for 7.30pm start. Food will be provided. Bring £4 and test your wits. Should be great fun.

Also, it's Christian Aid week. We had a great sermon on this from Michael on Sunday, so if you're inspired to give and haven't had the chance yet, there will be more envelopes next Sunday.

Father Robert

St George's Day sermon: you had to be there...

You had to be there... and I wasn't.
The Sunday before last, we celebrated St George's Day.
As we're St George Christ Church St Paul, we always remember St George's Day on a Sunday and this time round it was Father John to preach a sermon.
Since then, he's had 20 emails and frequent requests for a copy of the sermon.
We printed 25 copies of it for after the service this Sunday, and they ran out, so we printed a further 15. They've gone too. I'd better do more today.

Why this sermon?
Well, I can't quite tell you, because I was still on holiday, so I was attending a church in Paris that Sunday morning (where they weren't celebrating St George)! But, by all accounts of those who were in Forest Hill, it had passion. But more than that, it was about how standing up for your faith costs, even within the church, and how the church needs to look at the people it persecutes. What does inclusion mean if we systematically exclude some but not others?

Beyond that, I don't know why it provoked such a reaction. You had to be there... and I wasn't. You can get a sense of it by reading a copy of a sermon but good sermons aren't really designed to be read. They are meant for a group of people at a particular time.

And it wasn't without controversy. One person walked out of the church, upset at what was being said. Others greeted the end of the sermon with a round of applause. That's never happened in my time when I've been there.
As I said, you had to be there.

But it's also led me to think about what it is to be church. Because of course, you never want someone to walk out of the service. You don't choose that. But as someone once told me in marketing, if you get complaints, it's a sign you're making an impact. And if no one ever complains, then maybe we're in a world of rather bland platitudes. "Thank you for the service, father, very nice sermon" etc.etc. and all you ever do is end up preaching about motherhood and apple pie.

And the upset was genuine, just as the applause was genuine. And I guess it was because John was tackling a real issue. Like in the Lent course we just had, the discussion about euthanasia was electric at times. Often in quite passionate disagreement.

This is important, and so is staying together through all that.

I'm beginning to ramble, so let's just think about the coming week.

There's a PCC meeting this Tuesday (tonight), a Communication Action Team meeting on Wednesday night, no wedding this Saturday but there is a baptism on Sunday. We'll look forward to seeing you if you're coming to that.

We'll also be hearing about how the cubs got on at their camp which finished yesterday and lasted throughout the Bank Holiday weekend.

Thinking ahead, come to our QUIZ NIGHT on Saturday 16th May.

Father Robert

PS If you want to read the sermon, email into the website and I can email a copy to you.