weekly news sheet 16 May 2021

Dear Friends

A huge thank you to all of those who helped, or came along to our Teas for Trees at Capel church last weekend. Thankfully it didn’t rain, but the wind was quite strong – I was pleased to see the gazebos stayed in place. We raised £320 for TREEAID which will be doubled by the government. TREEAID tell me that £10 buys and plants one tree so you have just planted 64 trees to help the Great Green Wall, thank you.

As part of our plan to gradually return to normal, and after the success of last weekend’s teas we have decided that church teas are now back, at least for the summer. For the moment they will be served outside under gazebos and adhere to all Covid guidelines. Ockley will also be doing teas for the first time, so please do support us. The money from now on will go towards the costs of our churches and the services we provide. The next teas will be at Capel on 30 and 31 May 3-5pm. Fingers crossed for sunshine.

This week has seen the start of the National Church initiative ’Thy Kingdom Come’. This has been running since 2016 and takes place between Ascension and Pentecost. In fact nowadays it’s a global event and is treated as a special time to reflect and pray for people to move closer to God. This year for the first time there is also an app which is easily downloadable from your App Store. This not only has daily prayers but videos, reflections and bible readings. It also includes videos for children and teenagers. Do have a look at what’s available and learn more, the link is here:
www.thykingdomcome.global

This week’s sermon is given by Martin Breadmore the archdeacon of Dorking who uses the famous Peanuts cartoon characters to illustrate how much more we can do when we all work together. The transcript is attached and the video can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbFMO6bUO4c&t=59s

I know many of you are not yet in a position where you would like to return to physical church, so we will continue to record services for you to view via our website. We would, however, love to hear your thoughts on these services and what we can do keep in touch or help you transition back to ‘onsite’ church. Would you, for instance, like to see services at other times on a Sunday? Or would you like just to have the sermon and a couple of hymns recorded as a shortened version of the full service? How do we contact those who we haven’t seen for awhile and who maybe aren’t online? We have tried to drop hard copies of the weekly sheets to those we know don’t have good internet, but have probably missed some. Your thoughts would be really helpful, just reply to this email and I will make sure they are collated and shown to the PCC (anonymously if you prefer). We will also be sending out a questionnaire later in the summer as to what other things you would like to see your church doing or conversely not doing!

For now, the weekly sheets along with the readings and Martin’s sermon are attached. Photo of the week this week, a slightly muddy looking Four Wents Pond!

With love and prayers

Debbie von Bergen
debbievonbergen@icloud.com
07774 784008