From the Registers
Funerals at St. John’s
14th April - Bernard McKewon
21st April - Sheila Craig
26th April - Barry Staley
Funerals at Crematorium
7th April - Ian Paul Damerel
22nd April - Jack Lee
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Summer Evening Services at St. Catherine’s
Evening Holy Eucharist (no morning Eucharist on these dates)
Sunday, 8th May / Sunday, 5th JuneSunday, 10th July / Sunday, 14th Aug. / Sunday, 11th Sept.
Other Sunday Evening Services
1st May Evensong; 26th June Songs of Praise
25th Sep. Harvest Evensong
Other Services and Worship
Ascension Day is on Thursday May 5th. As well as the normal service at St. Catherine’s, there will be a Holy Eucharist at 7.00pm at St. John’s
Pentecost Praise on Sunday May 15th 6.00 pm at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, Esh Winning. This is organized by Churches Together in DH7. Please see the poster for details.
Prayer for Our Churches: St John’s, Tuesday, 17th May, 09.30 - 10.15 am. All welcome. (Note: Change of venue to St. John’s)
Open Churches: Both St. John’s and St. Catherine’s are to be open for quiet, prayer or to light a candle, etc. Please make use of these times, and let your friends and neighbours know.
St. John’s: Various times, Monday – Friday
St. Catherine’s: 10.30 – 12.00 Thursday (after the Holy Eucharist)
Brandon Parish Magazine
May 2016
St. John’s Church, Brandon &
St. Catherine’s Church, New Brancepeth
Sunday services
St. John’s - 9.45 am Holy Eucharist
St. Catherine’s - 8:45 am Holy Eucharist (also some at 6.00 pm)
Weekday services – followed by tea/coffee
Wed. 9.00 am St. John’s – Holy Eucharist
Thurs. 9.30 am St. Catherine’s – Holy Eucharist
Evening Service: Mon. 7.00 pm St. John’s – Holy Eucharist
Revd. Carl Peters, The Clergy House, Sawmill Lane, Brandon,
Durham, DH7 8NS. Tel: 0191 6803875
Other Contact Telephone Numbers
St. John’s: David (Churchwarden) – 3789718; Denise - 3781285:
St. Catherine’s: Joe (Churchwarden) – 3739927; Liz - 3731554
Website http://www.brandonparish.org.uk/Welcome.htm
https://www.facebook.com/StJohnTheEvangelistChurchBrandon
https://www.facebook.com/StCatherinesChurchNewBrancepeth
https://www.facebook.com/Stjohnschurchhallmeadowfield
Events:
PCC Meeting: Wed. 25th May 6.30 pm
St. John’s Spring Fayre on Saturday May 14th. Help is needed with prizes for a raffle, tombola, cakes and bric a brac. There is a list in the porch for stall holders. Will anyone willing to help either with a stall or helping on the day add their names please.
Tesco Collection for Christian Aid, Fri. 20, Sat. 21 May. Volunteers needed – see article in this magazine.
Thursday Coffee at St. John’s: 26th May at 10.30 am
Sunday July 3rd is the 100th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. There will be a parade from the Royal British Legion building followed by a Service of Remembrance in the church. The collection in the church will be for the hall fund.
Hall Fund Raising: 22nd July from 7pm at the Legion. Rock and roll night and raffle. Tickets £3 and can be purchased from Lesley Baxter, Shirley Kidd , Jan shoulder or behind the bar.
Walsingham Pilgrimage, 8th July. Any queries please see Fr Carl or Carolyn
Coach Outing to Lindisfarne on 13th Aug. The cost will be around £11, leaving St. John’s at 7.00 am. Holy Eucharist will be celebrated on the island. We will call at Seahouses on the way back. Please add your name to the list at the back of the church.
MOTHERS UNION DIARY DATES
May 10th – 11am Cathedral, Anthology of Prayer
May 11th – 7pm Friendship Evening at St. John’s Church. Speaker on fostering children, Susan Drape-Comyn (refreshments).
May 31st – 2pm Festival Service in Cathedral to celebrate 140 years of MU. Banner to be made and carried by children, the theme being families worldwide.
Children in danger: When the river levels rise, Morsheda worries that it might be like the worst time the floods hit. She remembers how desperate she was. How she hurried to build a makeshift raft for her frightened children. How they scrambled to safety as huge waves crashed against their house. How she prayed the raft wouldn’t capsize as it tipped and plunged on the swirling waters.
‘My children were so scared. My sister was holding them very tightly and we were panicking because my neighbour’s child was washed away.’
The floods are coming: Morsheda and her children live a precarious life. They know that the floods will come again, and soon. But we can lift our neighbours like Morsheda to safety.
Just £250 is enough for a Christian Aid Home Safety Package. It could flood-proof Morsheda’s home, raising it eight foot on an earth plinth, keeping her family safe at last. It could also buy a goat, seeds and a wormery to help produce compost, so Morsheda could keep livestock and grow crops on the small patch of land around her home. All of this will give her a long-term income and a solid foundation for a new life.
‘If I could raise my house then I would feel much safer living here with my children.’
YOU CAN HELP!
· Volunteer for an hour (or more) for the collection at Tesco on Fri. 20th and Sat. 21st. Sign up on the sheet at the back of the church.
· Give, using the envelopes in the church.
· Encourage your friends and neighbours by giving them an envelope and collecting it from them later.
· Consider holding a Big Brekkie to raise money for Christian Aid – See http://www.caweek.org/brekkie for more information and a free Brekkie Pack and other resources
CHRISTIAN AID WEEK is 16 - 24 May
This is the week we love every neighbour
and not just the ones next door or at the end of the street.
Can you help people like Morsheda?
Morsheda will never forget the day she nearly lost her baby son, Murshid. As floodwaters poured into her home, he fell from his bed into the inky water. He could have drowned in moments. Luckily, Morsheda woke when she heard him fall and was able to save him. But she knows that the floods will come again. Her home has already been hit several times. Each time, Morsheda gathers her family and holds them close as they wait for the danger to pass.
‘I feel very scared of the river.I keep thinking “it is coming”.’
Morsheda lives on low-lying islands in Bangladesh. She shares a single-room, corrugated-iron house with her four children. She earns as little as 74p a day doing backbreaking manual labour. She has no savings. And because floods are a terrifying part of everyday life, she doesn’t even have a safe place to call home.
News
Many thanks to David Jocelyn and Joe Anderson, who will serve as our Churchwardens for the next year. Also a thank you to those PCC members who have served this past year and to our newly elected members. Please see results of elections on the noticeboard.
St. John's Hall Meadowfield is now a registered charity, number 1165657. £450,000 has been raised so far in pledged grants plus over £11,000 from the community. We are still aiming for £500,000 plus project manager fees. Potential project managers are being interviewed. The lease of the land with the Boyne estatesis still to be finalised before any building work can start. This is with the solicitors.
Any questions for more info. please contact Lesley on 0784 6542035
From our Priest: Fr Carl Peters
‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.’
These are the post resurrection words of Jesus as he commissions his disciples to take the gospel into the world. Which of course is what they did. They are words that have inspired countless Christian people to mission over the centuries and they are words not just of history, but words of inspiration to us today.
Truthfully though, these words from Matthew’s Gospel are words that many of us might find rather scary and daunting. Instructions from Jesus that seem beyond us and our capabilities. Perhaps when we read these powerful words from Jesus, we might think that they are for other keener gifted Christians to engage with and act on. Well, the news is, they’re actually not intended for just an elite band of Christians who are like a thin band of icing on a cake. The commissioning on the mountain is for all of God’s people.
If we tear away the layers of all of us, there are probably varying degrees of self doubt and insecurity. But the disciples that Jesus spoke to on the mountain were only ordinary people like us, who sometimes had their doubts and inhibitions. It seems some doubt and disbelief was evident among these disciples in Jesus himself, at the point of them climbing the mountain after him. As there had been other doubts about the resurrected Jesus in other parts of the gospels, and we’ve heard some of the stories over recent weeks in this Eastertide.
But doubt and fear can be overcome and is overcome when the words of Jesus are listened to, believed in and lived out. And this is because Jesus gives us confidence. The Jesus story gives us confidence. Jesus chose ordinary men to be his apostles, fishermen and the like. In the ministry they shared with Jesus, the apostles did things they would not of imagined they would do. But God in Jesus led them and worked through them. In their time with Jesus the apostles had their highs and their lows. They saw heavenly glory and they saw darkness. But in sticking with Jesus on the journey they would begin to see the seeds of God’s promise sprout open.
God in Jesus, predicted the death and resurrection of the Son. The disciples saw this happen and gradually the confidence grew. God’s promise through Jesus and the angel at the tomb that Jesus would go ahead of them to Galilee, was also fulfilled. The disiples would continue to see as we see throughout the gospels, a God who makes things happen. Then Jesus, with all authority in heaven and earth says to his friends:
‘Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age ’
Those last words without doubt would have been encouraging to his disciples as they can be encouraging to us.
As we can now testify, those instructions and promise actively grew in the early church. Otherwise there would be no church in this place where we live. And the same instructions and promise will continue to manifest in us. We’ve just got to believe it.
When God the almighty has a plan there is nothing that can stop it. Not even our doubts and lack of confidence in what we can do. If we ever feel a bit alone in our Christian life, we’ve just got to repeat those words from Jesus.
‘I am with you always to the very end of the age.’
As our seasonal journey takes us to the Ascension of our Lord, not only do we marvel at that glory; we also might do well to put ourselves in the place of the apostle’s and in excited anticipation wait for the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. Yes the God who makes things happen, will send us out, with all our doubts and fears, to be his witnesses, in this our community, ‘and to all the ends of the earth.’