On the Sunday of the Coronation weekend, we will be celebrating at all the churches on May 7th.
The service at St John’s will be at 9.30am, followed by cake and Prosecco; the service at St George’s will be at 10am, followed by a cream tea; and the service at St Mark’s will be at 11am, followed by a bring-and-share lunch.
At 4pm on Sunday 7th, our regular, monthly Family Service will take place at St John’s with more Coronation celebrations, along with sandwiches and cake!
All are welcome at all or any of our services.
You can now sign up to receive daily Coronation reflections via email here.
Prayers will be available across the Diocese social media channels – feel free to share your prayers and thoughts using the hashtag #CoronationPrayers until Coronation Day on May 6th.
Your April magazine is out now, full of information, news and views, including what is happening this Holy Week as we approach Easter. There are details about Holy Week meditations, Good Friday and Easter services and a Good Friday Walk of Witness, as well as events after Easter. Did you know we are organising a Gin Evening with local distiller Nibbs Gin? And we have a quiz evening coming up too, plus a plant sale, a Christian Aid concert and much more!
You can also read the winning poems in the Farnham Poetry Competition, hear about Open the Book, and find out what groups like the WI are doing. There is prayer and some thoughts from the Ministry Team and the Church Cat!
Join us as we travel through Holy Week, which runs from Palm Sunday, April 2, to Easter Eve, April 8, with a series of services and meditations across all three churches.
Palm Sunday recalls the story of Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, welcomed as a king but riding on a humble donkey, and there will be services at all three churches – St John’s at 9.30am, St George’s at 10am and St Mark’s at 11am – with palm crosses given out.
Services and meditations in Holy Week
From Monday to Wednesday, April 3-5, there will be a series of short meditations for Holy Week each evening at St John’s at 7.30pm. These will be around 30 minutes long and will give time to reflect and pray.
On Wednesday, April 5 at noon, there will be a communion service at St Mark’s, and on Maundy Thursday, April 6 there will be communion services at St George’s and St John’s at 7.30pm, when the altar will be stripped and a vigil will be held. At St John’s there will also be foot-washing, recalling the act of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper before his death.
Maundy Thursday is so called because the name derives from the Latin world ‘mandatum’ which means ‘commandment’, and it recalls Jesus’ words at the Last Supper: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you.” So this is New Commandment Thursday.
Stripping the altar is an ancient custom whereby everything is removed from the altar and it reflects the way everything was stripped from Jesus on Good Friday – his clothes, his dignity, his life – and leaves the altar bare for the Good Friday liturgy the next day.
On Good Friday , April 7, there will be Good Friday Liturgy at St John’s at 9.30am. At the same time at St Mark’s there will be a craft session for children aged five to 11, from 9.30-11am, This will be followed by a service at 11am to which parents and carers are also invited, after which there will be hot cross buns for everyone.
You can also join in a Walk of Witness in central Farnham on Good Friday, by gathering in the Hart car park at 11.45am for a silent walk through central Farnham starting at noon, and ending up at St Andrew’s Church for a short service.
At 2pm there will be a ‘Good Friday Hour at the Cross‘ at St George’s, a time for prayer and reflection as we approach the time traditionally held to be the hour that Jesus died – 3pm.
On Saturday, April 8, several people from the parish are being confirmed at an Easter Eve service at Guildford Cathedral at 7.45pm. This is a special service with communion as well as baptism and confirmation, and is a lovely way to celebrate the coming of Easter. Please do join us.
The March parish magazine is here filled with plenty of news about the parish, including the Lent groups, the Seekers service, an encouragement to ‘Pray for 5’, the Literary Festival, groups and events, and the new Badshot Leader. The Badshot Leader was first produced 46 years ago and has been relaunched by the Badshot Lea Community Association in conjunction with the parish. It will appear in the magazine every two months and it can also be received directly from the Association – see page 19 of the magazine.
There are lots of advertisers too – please use them and tell them that you saw them in the magazine.
Enjoy!
Pictured above is a scene from The Chosen which we are discussing for Lent. Picture courtesy of The Chosen, Angel Studios.
Are you a seeker? Do you enjoy informal, creative services for all ages?
Come to our next Seekers service on Sunday, February 5 at 4pm at St John’s. There will be music, craft, a story, prayers, and sandwiches and cakes to follow. What’s not to like?!
It’s February, the month of Valentine’s love, pancakes and the first signs of Spring. It’s also a month when lots starts happening in the parish – well, does it ever stop? But here we are coming into Lent, with Lent courses which this year focus on the TV series The Chosen, a Questioning Faith course which will lead to confirmation in the Cathedral on Easter Eve, Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, with services of ashing, and our Pancakes and Temptations service. Then there is a barn dance on February 25th, and an invitation to enter the Farnham Poetry Competition – this year the theme is hope.
Take a look inside the magazine for more details where you will also find a response to the bishops’ proposals on equal marriage, the Church Cat, prayer, thoughts on faith, events and reports from local groups.
We are approaching the end of Advent and the time is drawing near when we will greet God in human form – Jesus, born into poverty in an occupied land, part of a family forced to flee as refugees into another country, a baby who grew up to offer us the light of God’s love then, now and through all time.
Craig Nobbs, Licensed Lay Minister in the parish, has created a series of Advent Reflections which you can listen to here.
The December and January magazine is out now, bringing you up-to-date with news and events in the parish, plus seasonal reflections and prayer, sources of help over the winter, and information on local groups and businesses.
There is a list of services over Christmas – please do join us – the background to Epiphany, Christingles, a Snowman Drive, events and lots more. Click on the link to download it below.
And don’t forget to let us have your news and articles. This is your magazine!
Wishing you a joyful Christmas and a blessed 2023.
This Advent, Craig Nobbs, an LLM in the parish, is running a series of Advent Reflections, starting with a Quiet Morning on Saturday, November 26th, from 9am until noon in the Sumner Room at St John’s, and continuing with drop-in sessions at St George’s on Thursdays in Advent from 6.30-8pm.
The Quiet Morning will start with a short act of morning prayer, followed by two or three short readings and reflections, plus time to stop and listen. You can slip in and out quietly if you can’t be there for the whole time.
On the Thursday evenings Craig will be in St George’s Church from 6.30-8pm and will offer an Advent Quiet Time interspersed with prayers and readings every 15 minutes or so. This makes it possible to come even if for a short time, and leave when you wish.
Craig says: “It’s healthy to take time out to stop and think about what Advent might reveal to us as individuals and potentially, as a church. Advent can be about listening and waiting for God to show something of himself to us, however brief. So, how do we wait for God? I’m providing some opportunities to help you take time out and hopefully rediscover how we begin to do so in what are busy times.”
We are continuing our Embodied Worship series over the next few weeks and this week are offering the chance try some Tai Chi, free of charge, at St Mark’s Church, on Wednesday, October 5, at 3pm. Tai Chi is a practice which involves a lot of focusing on the body and is calming and mindful.
The following day, Thursday, October 6, we will be in St George’s Church from 7pm, exploring prayer through a labyrinth. On October 13, we will bake bread together in St George’s (again 7pm) and on October 20 at 7pm, Michelle Chapman will lead us in some journaling.
Embodied worship reminds us that we are physical creatures and that everything we experience is through our bodies. Even our thoughts come through our bodies – our brains are physical parts of us. The rituals we use, our movements, the processes by which we respond to God, are all embodied and we worship an incarnate God, for God took flesh in an entirely radical way and was born in a human body.
The Parish of Badshot Lea and Hale 