I hope you have had a good week - please find below some of the things that have happened this week or that you might want to be involved in over the next 7 days:-
Please join us again this Sunday at 10am (or at a time convenient for you) in our Emmanuel Family Facebook group for our “local” service and a time together in worship. This will be like the last few weeks, post after post in real time to follow a full service that takes around an hour. You can join us live or enjoy it later in the day – the choice is yours. We’ll be singing, praying, reflecting and listen to the message from Gill Newton our District Chair. Why not join us? Any problems finding the group please email us and we will be happy to help.
Please find attached:-
A short order of service for the coming week – “Vine at Home 24 May 2020”
Prayer for the week ahead - “Emmanuel Corona Prayers week 10”
I can pray …. A scavenger hunt
“OPP Advert May 2020” – see full details under Good News below
Together at Home – Family Activities sheet picks up the theme of this Sunday’s reading
“MWoL 2020” - A Methodist Way of Life
2 Rainbow Patterns – see full details under Good News below
We are looking for help:
Welcome is a very important ministry in any church and encompasses everything that we do. If it is done well people feel valued and accepted and are more likely to return and talk about their experience in a positive light. When we had our big ‘Conversation’ last year, many people had great ideas about how our welcome could be improved at Emmanuel. The Leadership Team would like to put some thought in now before we return from lockdown. There is work we can start doing now: designing a welcome pack; updating contact forms; setting up systems for following up people; looking at how we adopt streets and welcome people who have just moved into the area; being intentional in our links to all the people who use our building. We are looking for people to be part of this task group to help with all of this. If you are passionate about welcome, have ideas and a willingness to contribute, please phone Joan Booth on 07845 698662 or email: joaniebeth1957@gmail.com
Get involved:
How tall can we go | We’re still looking for people to grow a sunflower, and also encourage other people to plant a sunflower seed, and post pictures as they grow as we grow hope together. When we are unlocked you could come, bring them to church and plant them along the back fence?
Hands together in prayer | We are inviting our community again to engage with us as a Church. From Tuesday next week there will be a length of bunting tape along the front wall of church. We shall provide resources on site, plus hand sanitizer, but anyone who wants to do the activity at home is also free to do so. We are inviting people to draw around their hand, cut it out, and then write the first name of someone they want to remember in prayer at this time, or something they are thankful for at this time. Then we are inviting people to pin their hand onto the bunting, joining hands with the one in front. It will look like “hands raised in prayer” – but it will also look like hands joined together in unity. As that is part of the experience of Pentecost we thought it might be a way of connecting with our local community. If you live local to Church and want to join in, please add your hand to help create our unity bunting.
This weekend - Cliffest
Cliff College is hosting their Festival @ Home this weekend. Cliff College has been hosting a spring/summer festival for over 100 years. This year's Festival theme is ‘Global Vision’. This offers us an amazing opportunity to reflect with and learn from some of our global partners, and we hope they will encourage and enable us to understand and learn from their context. They will be streaming live and pre-recorded Bible studies, seminars, workshops, preaching, worship and music straight to your home all weekend. Their speakers include Rev Dr Billy Abraham, Professor Evelyn Parker and Dr Miguel A. De La Torre; the worship leaders include Sam Taylor and Josh Gillam. To find more information visit Festival @ Home. There is a full programme planned which can be downloaded here: Festival Guide and there is also a Children's Programme: Childrenprog and a youth and young adults Programme: Y&YA
In other news:-
We hope you received a prayer booklet for Thy Kingdom Come. We hope you are making time to join in with the daily devotions and prayers – this unites us not only as a church family and with our Circuit, but also with Christians across our nation and world.
Please continue to remember in prayer all those leading our Church and Circuit at this time – including the Leadership Team, Trustees, Circuit staff and all employees (including furloughed workers).
Dial-a-Prayer - A FREE phone service to hear prayers and news from the Methodist Church has been launched. Listen to a prayer: 0808 281 2514; Listen to news: 0808 281 2478; Content is updated weekly on Thursday evening.
Cameron and Ben continue to have a day off each week - Cameron’s day off is on Saturday and Ben’s is on Tuesday. Cameron will be away ‘on holiday’ Thursday, Friday and Saturday next week – in the case of an emergency please contact Ben. For Prayer Chain requests on those days please contact Doris – on 07450 248667 or e-mail on: dorisandoh74@gmail.com
Donations of food for the Foodbank can still be made at Tesco’s in Wilthorpe, but we would prefer only shopping from that store to be placed in the trolley there. Thetrolley is quite small and soon gets filled up, which means a lot of extra work for those moving food to the Foodbank. If you have bought items for the Foodbank from other stores can we suggest that you preferably drop those items not at Tesco’s, but at Emmanuel Church. The large storage box is at the back of church (where the vestry door opens up onto the back garden – by the traffic cones!) and we are getting plenty of great donations in both places – thank you for your support.
The North West Church is looking for someone between 18 and 23 to work part time with older people and the socially isolated from September. This role is part of the One Programme run by the Methodist Connexion of Great Britain. The ONE Programme is about equipping, empowering, and encouraging young people in their discipleship, vocation and leadership. Details of the North West's role and the others available across the connexion can be found here: https://www.methodist.org.uk/OPPJobs/ Please share the advert with your contacts as best you can under the current circumstances. Whilst they themselves may not be appropriate for the post, they may know people who are — children and grandchildren are just who we're looking for!
We are wondering about holding an Alpha course online during the summer months. We shall use it for exploring faith, asking questions and deepening our walk in faith. If you have not done a course before please do consider joining. It will be open to anyone in the North West Church – but we need to know there is enough interest before we set a starting date. This may be an opportunity to ask a friend, colleague, family member or neighbour to join you on the course. People are very open to the things of faith and an Alpha course is a great opportunity to help people explore faith. If you are interested, please send an e-mail to Cameron or ring him for further information on (01226) 207208.
Knit and Share: We have a series of knitting patterns for creating rainbows. It might be that you want to knit rainbows to give out to friends or neighbours – (with perhaps a note saying you are praying for them?) or if you can make lots, we would be happy to receive them so that they can be left at church in the next few weeks for people to take home. We have attached two patterns, and if you know some of our older members who could help, then print them a pattern off and include them in helping us to bless our neighbourhood with signs of hope.
There have been more great good news stories this week! If you have any to share please let me know for the newsletter next week (or post them on our Facebook page)
Cameron received the following from one of our team who are watching over the premises in this time of Lockdown:
“I want to take some time to thank you for including me in this checking duty. It has given me the opportunity to ‘feel’ the building that I take for granted so often… I have kind of allowed myself to sense Emmanuel premises, ethos and function as part of Gods plan .
So I now have 12 prayer stations in the church – I have prayed in each of these; and then over the rest of the week I allow God to lead me meditational (virtually) into each station, whenever I need to feel my Emmanuel support and love.
The entrance – where we welcome/ greet and say our goodbyes
The vestry – where our preacher prepares to share God’s message
The organ – for solemnity and reverence
The lectern – for hearing God’s word
The cross- our focus / our humility /God’s grace and Sacrifice/ the assurance of a risen Lord
The Piano – for liveliness and praise
The sound-desk – technology for mood and pathos, sight and sound
The pews- our congregation, our worship, our family
Facilities – kitchen and toilets – to see to our physical bodies
Teaching and meeting rooms - creating community and all age space for The Lord’s outreach and Christian work and growth
Offices – to keep the business running
Corridors – to link all parts of the building together!
It is only a building – but every bit of it melds to provide us with somewhere that becomes a central nucleus for church family and our community
God uses this building as a special space where we can come together, to meet and greet and share; where we can hear His word; where He can encourage and equip us to go out and serve Him. It’s very special ……so I feel humbled for having taken our Building so much for granted!”
Other news in brief…
As a church we have received £5000 from the estate of a local person who died a while ago.
We have had some wonderful answers to prayer on the prayer chain. One person who was feeling quite low said, “Suddenly I was aware that many people were praying for me – it felt like a shower going through my body and it has really helped me.” Another person witnessed to the power of prayer saying, “Thank everyone for their prayers. I am feeling very much better, almost like a new woman".
The lawns at Church have been mown this last week, and someone has been doing some gardening and clearing up litter (thanks to all those who have helped).
Dates for your diary:-
On Sunday 31 May at 10am for Pentecost the Circuit will be hosting a live online service on Zoom for any who wants to join in. We’ll be taking a break from our usual approach and joining in with this important service to see friends live from across the circuit. Keep a look out nearer the time for the Zoom links and passwords.
Our Church quiz will be on Wednesday 3 June at 7.30pm on Google Meet. All you need is to have a Google account (easy to create) to enable you to join in and some paper and a pen. If you want to join, contact Cameron (thestirks@tiscali.co.uk) and he will send you a link to join in. You can be on your own, as a family or a couple – more fun than high-level competition!
The next Zoom prayer meeting will be on Thursday 4 June at 7.15pm (the 1st Thursday of the month). If you are interested in joining in the prayer meeting, let Cameron know, either by e-mailing him on thestirks@tiscali.co.uk, leaving a message via the FB Emmanuel family page, or leaving a message on his answer phone.
Doris posted this on the Emmanuel Family Facebook page earlier this week, and I thought it was a nice way to end this week’s newsletter:-
Many thanks & God bless
The Leadership Team