We are delighted that our stonemason has been able to complete the west side of the churchyard wall in the past few months. Many of you have contributed and raised money so that this project could at last begin and the result is outstanding. I know that he has been much encouraged by many who have passed by and stopped and chatted and encouraged him in the work.
Post expires at 10:57pm on Saturday March 21st, 2020
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Loving Father, help us to see this holy season of Lent as a time of
spiritual renewal rather than a time of deprivation. Motivate us to
reach a new level of experiencing your Grace.
Post expires at 7:29am on Tuesday March 3rd, 2020
The post March 2019 Issue 25 The Beginning of Lent and Mothering Sunday appeared first on The Parish of Capel and Ockley.
March is here and I cannot believe it is now just over a year that our new united parish of Capel and Ockley has been in effect and that later this month we will be holding our first Annual Parochial Church Meeting together to review our first twelve months and set our sights to imagining the future. Just as nature around us is greening so too we are hoping that lots of new shoots and some young tender plants of church growth will begin to flourish and take root around our two communities.
As I prepare to write my report for the APCM I can look back and reflect on all that we have achieved – the highs and lows, joys and challenges we have faced. Everyone has worked so hard to enable ministry to flourish in both villages and we are grateful for all the support both communities have given us. Each church has been able to hold a regular Sunday morning service three out of four Sundays in the month and then on the fourth Sunday we take turns to worship together at either Ockley or Capel. It has worked very well and for me it has been such a pleasure to meet my new parishioners and get to know how Ockley works – I am still very much learning of course (!) Our two congregations also really enjoy being with one another and our PCC (Parochial Church Council) has flourished working hard to ensure everything has run smoothly. I cannot thank everyone enough for their care and commitment to our churches – it really has been a joy!
So looking back at the past year what have we achieved? Well, both churches have made steps forward in maintenance and restoration work on their ancient buildings and surrounds. For all this type of work we are very grateful for the support financially from both the Friends of St John the Baptist and the Friends of St Margaret’s. At Capel most notably we have been able to replace our rainwater goods on the church which was long overdue in order to protect the walls; a new fire exit door has been made near the organ and kitchen area; and we are looking at replacing the interior lighting with a new lighting scheme which is very exciting indeed. At Ockley, plans are moving forward for also a new fire exit door along with an outside WC and a new heating system! Again, very much needed and will greatly improve the experience of our congregations and visitors! I stress though that all of these improvements have only been made possible through the money raised over the years by our Friends groups.
As many of you will be aware by our Stewardship campaign, we have to raise money separately throughout the year to support the cost of a full time minister here (that’s me!) which is metered out through something called parish share. Every church has to pay thousands of pounds to their Diocese to provide ministry costs and other resources to keep our churches open. Please, please, do think about contributing even a small amount for us to keep our churches open. It is very easy to organise and information is available in our churches or speak to one of our treasurers or myself.
Despite the constant shortfall in finance for ministry we have been able to raise funds in all sorts of creative ways. In November we enjoyed a magical dinner with superb food and magicians in Ockley Village Hall. In October we benefitted from a share of the proceeds from that wonderful Pop up Spanish restaurant in Capel Memorial Hall! We raised money for our local schools in the annual Vicarage Fete, taken collections for The Children’s Society at Christingle, a donkey charity ‘Safe Haven’ in the Holy Land through our Palm Sunday collection; CMS (Christian Mission Society) through Church teas at the end of the season and The Royal British Legion through Remembrance Sunday, not to mention Christian Aid and Traidcraft goods. We also raised awareness through Curry and Comedy for children whose lives are changed by sponsorship through Compassion UK. All in all everyone is so generous with their time and gifts. Thank you all very much.
And of course who could forget Remembrance Sunday this year as we commemorated one hundred years since the armistice was signed. The noise of that canon gun going off brought it home to us all just what the sounds of war must have been like for our brave soldiers and airmen. Capel Church Teas continued to serve scrumptious teas from Mothering Sunday to the beginning of December and we had the most wonderful exhibition of Quilting and art and crafts which filled St Margaret’s with rich colours and textures, part of a very special weekend last April which again raised much needed church funds.
Sometimes it seems like it takes an age for certain projects to get off the ground so to speak and the restoration of the Church Boundary Wall was one of these. Well this year with the help of our new architect and a brilliant stonemason the West wall is nearing completion and I know that many of you have admired Shaun’s work and that of his volunteer assistant Tom and have given generously to the project. We have been greatly assisted by the Parish Council in sharing the cost of this long wall which separates the churchyard from the Parish Burial ground. We want to continue the good work and so will be fundraising for the next section of the wall to be completed, so if you appreciate the look of our beautifully restored wall, please do help us!
Another project or area of ministry which has been simmering away for some time is that of providing teaching and activities for the younger members of our community in the Christian faith. Our church schools do an amazing job of teaching Christian basics and how to live out your faith in everyday life, but Sunday is increasingly a day when it is difficult to attract the young to church. Messy Church has been a constant help in this area as it happens on a Tuesday after school once a month, but there are many more children and families to which we would like to offer opportunities to hear about the love that God has for each one of us. To this end we will be spending a half day away reviewing our children’s work and then imagining the future. You may find you are given a short questionnaire in the next few weeks if you have youngsters, in which we are asking for your ideas and feedback as to what you might like to have provided from our churches. We will be using your responses to imagine the future for our children.
There is so much more than I have space here to share with you about our churches life so do come along to the APCM at St Margaret’s Ockley which will begin at 11am on Sunday the 24th March after our ECO church team lead us in a special Creation service at 9.30. And that’s another thing; both churches have become ECO churches now making Guildford an ECO diocese now. Intrigued? Well come along and find out more. In any case all this and more will be available for you to read if you pop into Capel or Ockley and pick up a copy of our annual report. Otherwise, why don’t you just join us one Sunday and journey with us as we imagine the future?!
With my love and prayers
Revd Liz
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Dear all
Well hello from ‘panto-land’ – three performances down and three to go. So far, so good; it seems everyone who has seen Ali Baba and the forty thieves has thoroughly enjoyed it and so too are we performers I think! I have really enjoyed how the Ockley Dramatic Society production encourages people of all ages and abilities to tread the boards and especially the children who really make the pantomime special by their acting and dancing. It has been great fun.
As I write this letter I am looking forward to Candlemas next Sunday which brings to a close the season of Christmas and Epiphany. Epiphany means revelation and all the themes of our services in January are all about revelation from God about whom Jesus was and is. St Margaret’s decided to keep their Christmas tree and other festive decorations up for the whole of January in church at Ockley – something which maybe has not been done before. This is perfectly in order as many churches all over the world do the same as technically Christmas doesn’t end until the beginning of this month. I can hear some of you scream in horror at the thought!! This morning our service was of both congregations at St Margaret’s and looking at the tree I thought actually how lovely it is and how fitting that we are still reminded at the end of January, that Christmas has really only just come and gone, and the fact that the church still holds the Christmas tree somehow symbolises that Christ was born and that he is still with us, even though most of us have put the Christmas decs away. (Ours are still waiting in a pile I am afraid…)
Well, things move fast in the church year, and as we celebrate Christingle at the beginning of this month and hopefully raise a good amount of money for the work of the Children’s Society, we will enjoy a short period of time before we start preparing for Lent. There are all sorts of services on offer as usual this month from Book of Common Prayer Matins and Holy Communion, to Café Church, a very informal way of doing church, to Family Communion from the contemporary Common Worship to Messy Church, and of course the Sunday Session which is a very relaxed lovely hour or so of live guitar and instrumental music held in Bob and Judy Cranham’s home, with words to encourage and challenge along with space to reflect and respond. You will see details of all these in our regular church services and events page. We also have another concert arranged this month in Capel church, classical guitar played by Andrew Scott (of Spanish Pop up Restaurant fame) and our own professional jazz guitarist Bob Cranham. It should be a great evening so please do join us! Watch this space as Bob has other concert ideas in the pipeline for us too!
We have also said farewell to some very special people in the last few weeks. Someone very special to us in our church at Capel and around the Surrey Weald Team and Ockley, Forest Green and Okewood areas was Reverend Canon Chris Drummond. Many of you will know Chris and his wife Gwyneth who have been very much part of church and local community for many years. Chris died just before Christmas after some weeks in hospital. He was 92. We had a wonderful Service of Thanksgiving for him just recently, where many gathered to sing many rousing hymns and remember Chris and to hear recollections of his long ministerial career in all sorts of places, including Nigeria, and to hear wonderful family memories. We shall miss him so much in so many ways but we feel blessed as a community to have had his presence among us so long and we are glad to be able to cherish Gwyneth in our midst. We also said farewell to Tony Goddard who was an Ockley farmer, married to Rosemary, who was our organist at Capel and played in many other churches too. Tony was a well-known and much loved member of our community and church. He was extremely musical and one of the highlights of his memorial service was singing with the choir a Christmas carol which he had composed. It was in many ways a wonderful start to our Christmas services in December. He will be much missed too and our hearts go out to Rosemary and the family. There have been others too, not perhaps so well known in both church and community, but equally special and well known to God and those who loved and cared for them. It always seems especially hard when loved ones die at Christmas time, particularly when that death is unexpected, but it is always such a privilege to visit families and to help prepare a fitting tribute and service for them in honour of all they were and contributed to others in their lifetime.
Many of us have questions about life and whether there is any truth in the Christian faith or any other faith for that matter. I am pleased to say well in advance that there will be a great opportunity to ask all the questions you have ever wanted to about such matters in an Alpha course which St Peters at Newdigate are organising. Alpha provides the space to listen to a talk, explore and put your point of view across, all in an atmosphere of convivial hospitality where we will all enjoy a meal together each week. The course doesn’t begin till April so there’s plenty of time to think about participating. I will be there in any case and of course in the meantime you are always welcome to chat with me anytime about anything!
Till then dear friends..
With my love and prayers as ever
Revd Liz
Post expires at 7:23am on Sunday February 9th, 2020
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Post expires at 4:36pm on Sunday February 2nd, 2020
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Dear all
Happy New Year! I hope you had a good Christmas and are now raring to go into 2019?! Oh dear, January is a tough month isn’t it. The Spring seems a long way away but at least the nights are already drawing out which is amazing. Light is such a marvellous thing isn’t it – we long for it in the darkness of these winter days and in the darkness of some areas of life too. So light is my theme for this month’s letter because before Christmas I went on a family trip up to the West End in London to see the Christmas lights. This turned out to be very exciting as I haven’t been to see the lights in town for many, many years and I had forgotten just how magical they are. The trip included a visit to Hamley’s toy store in Regent Street, which was suitably manic, with Christmas elves singing Jingle bells outside the store and being bombarded by bubble machines as we entered the shop. Never mind we survived even that! There were Christmas lights everywhere – more than I ever remember – but perhaps that’s because of LED now? The piece de resistance though were the beautiful Christmas angels that appeared to fly down the whole of Regent Street, their trains and wings covering many metres. They were truly magnificent.
One of the most famous readings we have at our Christmas services is the reading from John’s gospel which describes the birth of Christ is the light coming into the world ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it’. Well at the beginning of next month we celebrate Jesus being the light of the world with our annual Christingle Service. This year The Children’s Society celebrates 50 years of the Christingle which has grown from the first ever Christingle service in this country at Lincoln Cathedral through to 20 churches holding Christingle services two years later to well over 5,400 churches holding them today and over 1 million people attending. All the money raised goes to the Children’s Society who help the most vulnerable children in our communities nationally. The service originates from Germany in 1747 and was performed in local churches all over Moravia when families would gather together at Christmas time. In the first service the children were encouraged to take their Christingle home to re-light and place in their cottage to show the light of Christ to passers –by. Our Christingle takes place on the first Sunday in February which is the feast of Candlemas which is the Presentation of Christ at the Temple. This is when Mary and Joseph take the baby Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem as was customary for Jewish boys. Two faithful people there recognise him as their Lord and greet him with great joy and celebration . Candlemas marks for churches the official end of the Christmas season – we go on longer than twelfth night! So I hope you will join us for our Capel and Ockley Christingle and celebrate that Jesus is the light of the world.
Finally part of the Christmas traditions is pantomime isn’t it? After my debut in the summer as a ‘Spangle Sister’, the mum of a rather interesting singing duo or trio as my character was the drummer – I have rather rashly offered myself up for the Ockley Society’s annual pantomime Ali baba and the forty thieves. I have been cast as a spice trader! Hopefully by the time you read this I will know my lines or at least know when I have to say them. So cheer yourself up if you need it and come and see the show – I think it’s quite funny but I guess I’m biased!
Have a good January
With my love and prayers as always
Revd Liz
Post expires at 7:55am on Wednesday January 1st, 2020
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Spend your time and energy in the exercise of keeping spiritually fit.
1 Timothy 4:7
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Wishing all our readers a joyous and peaceful Christmas. “Thanks be to
God for his indescribable gift” 2 Corinthians 9:15
The post Issue 22 – December 2018 appeared first on The Parish of Capel and Ockley.
Dear all
On putting pen to paper so to speak, as I write, the weather has turned very cold! What a shock to the system after our beautiful autumn and the generally mild temperatures we have enjoyed. The central heating is definitely being turned up a bit! I wonder what this next month of December will bring? It is such a busy time of the year, although I think it’s busy in Capel and Ockley all year round with the amazing range of activities, events and groups that offer such a wide and varied programme. However, as we approach Christmas it always seems there is virtually no time in December before the 25th and so this month we I hope will enjoy the various Christmassy events on offer. The churches in Capel and Ockley will be hosting and supporting much of these so do study the December services and events list in this magazine to find the detail. Everything is also on our Capel and Ockley website too. If you haven’t visited it yet here is the address www.capelandockleychurch.org.uk So if your Christmas has to include donkeys, carols, Christmas trees, excited children, nativities, cribs, Father Christmas, mulled wine and mince pies, indoors or outdoors its happening in one of our villages or churches! That’s without the traditional Christmas worship of course, throughout the month and into the season of Christmas which ends for churches on Candlemas Day when we hold our annual Christingle service in aid of the Children’s society. Always a wonderful occasion! There is something about lighting candles isn’t it that is so wonderful in winter time and we have plenty of that in church!
Last month we marked in a big and rather loud way the end of the First World War on Remembrance Sunday. The church has never been so full and it was so moving to commemorate this special occasion together and for the first time having the two minute silence begun and ended by ex-naval guns organised by Flight Lieutenant Andrew Davidson on behalf of the Military Show. It really brought it home to us just what our men went through on the front line and in battle. It was extremely loud and that was a much reduced charge to its normal firing. Thank you, Andrew and Johnny for organising this for our village commemorations.
As we remember what happened 100 years ago, in a sense this month is a month of remembrance also. We remember something that happened over 2000 years ago and that is the birth of Christ which took place in a small town called Bethlehem. It was in contrast a fairly quiet event in a stable or cave attached to a pub which provided emergency shelter to the Holy family. That is I suppose if you discount the loud and joyful singing of the angels announcing his birth on the hillside to the shepherds; the background sounds of the animals sharing the stable, the exotica of the caravan of camels and wise men seeking and following the star which led them to Bethlehem; what a sight it all must have been, and in any case is any birth of a child ever quiet? Yet it would seem a strange way for God’s Son to be born into his world. Shouldn’t God’s action be impossible to miss, like the way we jumped almost out of our skins when the guns were fired?! Had it all gone horribly wrong?
God’s strange preparations are a tender mixture of the ordinary and the extraordinary. Just over 100 years ago on the battle fields in that terrible Great War, on Christmas Eve, hostilities ceased on both sides and French, German and British soldiers crossed trenches to exchange seasonal greetings and talk. Apparently there were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps, carol singing, football games, sharing of food and souvenirs. It has to be said that this was during the early months of the war when both sides were reconsidering their strategies, yet what an extraordinary occurrence this was and is remembered as a symbolic moment of peace and humanity amidst one of the violent events of human history. Ordinary men brought together by the extraordinary remembrance of the birth of Christ and what it had come to mean to them in that life and death situation very far from home. In Advent, those days before Christmas which the church observes, we remember the prophets from centuries ago who foretold that one day there would be a saviour who will bring great change to the world. The Saviour has come and we also look forward to the time when he will truly come again to take the world wholly to himself. Then there could be a really big bang! In the meantime we celebrate and remember that God is with us – Emmanuel – God with us who ultimately will bring peace to the world for all time. Have a peaceful and happy Christmas wherever you are and whatever your Christmas traditions are!
With my love and prayers
Revd Liz
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