The parish now has its own YouTube channel where we are posting services, sermons, music and other videos. Please sign up to it by clicking here and then clicking on ‘Subscribe’. Then you can browse our videos to your heart’s content.
We’d like to add videos of our church members doing things – singing, poetry, drama etc. If you have anything you would like to share, contact Alan, revd.alan@badshotleaandhale.org
Where is God in this coronavirus pandemic? Where is God in any suffering?
These are reasonable questions. Here are two people who have been thinking about this.
In an article for unherd.com, Giles Fraser doesn’t give an answer but says that Christianity allows us to sit with the question, to weep with the question. Church, he says, “remains one of the few spaces in our culture in which we are allowed to acknowledge the existence of futile suffering without someone feeling so uncomfortable about it that they need to reassure us all that everything is going to be OK”.
And yet, that reassurance is still there in “a story that speaks of love as being ultimately greater that death, and as a triumph over even the most purposeless of human pain”.
Read the whole piece here.
For Richard Rohr, suffering may be inevitable but it is also a time when God can be trusted. On Tuesday this week (April 14), in his daily meditation published on the Centre for Action and Contemplation website, he reflected that: “Our knowledge of God is participatory. God refuses to be intellectually ‘thought’, and is only known in the passion and pain of it all, when the issues become soul-sized and worthy of us.”
Read the whole piece here.
Apologies if you tried to get on earlier and found a confusing service. In rushing to fix one problem I created another. This should at about 3:00 on Friday 17th.
Click on the video to join us in worship
Coronavirus is causing massive challenges to many of us, including financial and those involving domestic abuse. Among those there to help is Citizens Advice Waverley.
Advisers can provide advice about a range of issues:
There is a team of more than 60 home-based advisers ready to give free, independent advice. The best ways to contact them are:
South West Surrey Domestic Abuse Outreach Team is continuing to help during this period. Domestic abuse is any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality.
The team includes qualified independent Domestic Violence Advisers who provide practical advice and emotional support. They will always listen, support and believe. Call them on 01483 898884 (Mon-Fri 9-4pm) or email swr@swsda.org.uk
There is also plenty of on-line self-help material:
Farnham Foodbank is still busy and is distributing food direct to clients, thanks to furloughed drivers from a local engineering firm. If you need help, see details below.
Donations are also needed, both food and money, and you can drop donations off at Church House (the Vineyard Centre), Union Road, Farnham (opposite Gostrey Meadow) between 10am and noon on Thursdays.
Particularly needed at the moment tinned tomatoes, tinned potatoes, individual sponge puddings, sachets of powdered desserts (like Angel Delight), instant mash, tinned rice puddings, laundry detergent tablets, tinned meat (ham, spam, corned beef etc.), and they would love sun cream.
If you need help and have a paper voucher, take a photo of the paper voucher and text it to the Foodbank on 079015 81539 or email it to info@farnham.foodbank.org.uk
They will deliver a food supply to your doorstep.
If you don’t yet have a voucher, contact a Referral Agency who will discuss your situation and supply you with a Foodbank voucher, or contact the Foodbank with the details directly.
Farnham Foodbank: https://farnham.foodbank.org.uk/
You may be aware that we have been videoconferencing after church coffee. If you have a smart phone and would like to join us, here are the instructions. These take screen shots from a recent version of Android, but I guess iPhones work similarly (the picture above is an iPhone, so don’t worry if yours doesn’t look like that).
Go into the Play Store (Android) or App Store (Apple).
In the bar at the top type Microsoft Teams
Click on Microsoft Teams in the list.
Your screen should say install (mine says open because it is already installed). Click on that.
When the time to join comes, click on the link in the Weekly Notices, or the invitation that has been emailed to you.
Go into the Play Store as above.
type zoom
Pick Zoom Cloud Meetings.
Click on Install as above.
When the time to join comes, click on the link in the Weekly Notices, or the invitation that has been emailed to you.
If you do not currently get the weekly notices, you can sign up here.
Photo by: Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay
The Coronavirus has put a stop to a lot of things, among them the magazine which we usually distribute thanks to the hard work of a lot of people who deliver them through letterboxes across the area. Obviously that isn’t possible so we have experimented with an online magazine and you can find the results here.
If this goes well, when we are through the pandemic we may well produce a printed one and an online one, perhaps with a paywall and maybe even adverts.
Let us know what you think and if you want to write a piece, email editor@badshotleaandhale.org
Thanks to the Bible Society for these videos about Jesus, his life, death and resurrection.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndtnZV-5QTo&w=560&h=315
Here are today’s services, with a few extras thrown in.
If you haven’t signed up for our E News, or Weekly Notices, please do so. Includes information about what is coming in the next week and the week after.
Two items I would like to draw your attention to. They were in last week’s service, but there has been little response, so if you are interested, please let me know. Thanks
Would anyone like to take part in a virtual house group after Easter? Or would anyone like to run a virtual house group after Easter? Please let me know if you are interested, and if so which days/times of day you could make, and which course(s) you are interested in. More information available here: https://wordpress.com/post/badshotleaandhale.org/11218
In this time when we cannot meet we can still pray for each other. We are contemplating drawing together a list of people to pray for for each day of the month. Not because we are ill or in need, but just because we exist! However, in discussing this we came across the issue of consent, so by way of this notice we are asking whether you would like to be on this list. If so, please let Alan know. Thanks revd.alan@badshotleaandhale.org
St John’s
St George’s
St Mark’s
St John’s were in the process of collecting for lilies, before the church was shut. Normally there would be lilies in church, and a notice saying who was being remembered. Easter Lilies 2020.
Livvy and June have recorded another Taize chant:
There are also some other things to look at here.
There are also some videos for children of all ages here:
Picture at the top by Kris Lawrence
Here is today’s service.
You may also be interested in the photos and poems that people have contributed to us: here.
Image by Kris Lawrence
The Parish of Badshot Lea and Hale 