Hello from the Rector
Dear friends,
This Sunday is a fifth Sunday of the month so please do come along to our joint service at St James Barlborough at 10am. We are having a special Healing Eucharist. It will be like a normal communion service but with a part in the middle where you will have the opportunity to receive anointing with holy oil.
I first went to a healing eucharist many years ago and was very unsure what it was all about. I didn’t think I would go up for anointing but a friendly person just encouraged me to join the queue as if I was going up to receive communion. When I got to the front, I didn’t have to say anything, the priest put his hands on my head and said a prayer which he read off a card and then made the sign of the cross in oil on my forehead. I then returned to my seat. It was a very moving experience as the church I was in was very diverse with people from all over the world and some recent refugee arrivals. I watched everyone go up and realised that God knew the situations of everyone in the room and so the same prayer was sufficient for each person. And especially for those who couldn’t even speak English, they knew they’d been blessed and that God had heard their prayer.
So the service this Sunday will be similar, we will have the opportunity (there is no obligation!) to come forwards as we do for communion to receive anointing and prayer. You can come for yourself or on behalf of someone else. We will also come to people in their seats if it is difficult for them to move. This is a good opportunity for each of us to come with those things that are laying heavily on our hearts at the moment and bring them in prayer to God. As the old Spiritual song says ‘It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, Oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer’! This gives us the chance to do this all together, to say ‘yes, God, I need you’.
I look forward to seeing you on Sunday.
See you soon,
Rev Bryony
Plastic Free Harvest Festival
As part of our efforts to gain the eco church award we are bringing back our Plastic Free Harvest Festival! We will be holding an Eco Fair on Saturday 5th October from 10am-12noon at Clowne. This will be a chance to run a preloved stall, find out a bit more about recycling and help us decorate the church for Harvest Festival. If you have any home grown produce to bring and sell or if you would like to run a stall on an eco theme please let us know. Harvest Festival at Clowne will be Sunday 6th October and at Barlborough on Sunday 13th October and donations of non-perishable items will be donated to the Freedom Project Food Bank.
Live Nativity in Chesterfield Saturday 14th December – actors and volunteers needed!
On Saturday 14th December there will be a live adult nativity play put on in Chesterfield town centre. It’s the first time anything like this has happened. The team organising it are looking for anyone to help volunteer to make costumes and sets, help with stewarding on the day, props management or even to play a part (we need innkeepers, magi, shepherds, Herod, Mary, Joseph etc). If you are interested, please let Rev Bryony know or email the coordinator Yvonne directly putting ‘nativity’ into the email subject line: yvonnehousemanager@hotmail.com.
These are the readings for this coming Sunday 29th September, the 18th Sunday of Trinity (these are for the healing service rather than taken from the lectionary):
1 Kings 19:1-8
Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, ‘So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.’ Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.
But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.
1 Corinthians 12: 12-22, 24-27
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
Gospel Reading John 6:
Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.’
These are our upcoming service and event times for your diary:
Sunday 29th September Trinity 18 (5th Sunday) – note, we are at Barlborough
8.30am Morning Prayer, Clowne
10.00am Healing Eucharist, Barlborough
Saturday 5th October
10am-12noon Eco-Fair at Clowne
Sunday 6th October Harvest Festival
8.30am Morning Prayer, Barlborough
10.00am Sung Eucharist, Clowne
5.00pm Choral Evensong, Barlborough
Sunday 13th October Harvest Festival
8.30am Morning Prayer, Clowne
10.00am Sung Eucharist, Barlborough
Sunday 20th October Trinity 21
8.30am Morning Prayer, Barlborough
10.00am Sung Eucharist, Clowne
2.30pm and 3.30pm Baptisms at Clowne
Sunday 27th October – Bible Sunday
8.30am Morning Prayer, Clowne
10.00am Sung Eucharist, Barlborough
5.00pm Refresh Service, Clowne
Sunday 3rd November All Saints and All Souls
8.30am Morning Prayer, Barlborough
10.00am Sung Eucharist for All Saints Day, Clowne
5.00pm Fauré’s Requiem for All Souls, Barlborough
Contact the clergy:
Rev’d Bryony Taylor, Rector
01246 813569
revbryonytaylor@gmail.com
Rev’d Mike Fitzsimmons, Assistant Curate
07385 292902
rev.mike.fitz@gmail.com
Please note that the clergy’s usual day off is a Friday. Find out other information about our churches on our website: http://bcjj.org.uk
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