Weekly Letter from St Luke's - 20 November 2020

Dear Parish Friends

June and I are happy to be back in Ekibin after our time away, and I am very grateful to all who have looked after the parish, in particular the Wardens, and the clergy who took services.

We return as the church’s year draws to a close, and with it a focus in the bible readings in our liturgy on the final things. Next Sunday’s gospel reading has an apocalyptic message and at Evening Prayer, we are reading parts of the book of Revelation. As we hear these passages, we need to remember that there are many levels of meaning in scripture. In the case of Revelation, John’s visions address his contemporary situation of a persecuted young church, as well as being a prophecy of events at the end of times or a chart of the whole history from Christ’s first to his second coming.

This ‘now and in eternity’ view is important. We live in the hope of the Resurrection, which contains both a promise of eternal life and a call to action in today’s world. As Jesus tells us in this Sunday’s reading of the separation of the sheep and the goats when he comes in his glory, what we do now matters.

As a parish we have this year been thinking a lot about how we live out our calling to be the people of God in our area. Much has been focussed on the redevelopment plans and the Anglican Early Learning Centre, but the responses to the survey we ran mid-year also showed a great desire for building up a thriving, faithful, charitable congregation supporting each other and our community. This is a great aspirational vision, but to achieve this we need to plan together and set priorities for the year(s) ahead. This is called a Mission Action Plan. What do we need to do to achieve our vision? What specific things will we do in the next year, or the next three years? What resources (some of which will come as part of the ELC development) do we need?

I would like to invite anyone in the parish who would like to be part of the development of our Mission Action Plan to meet on Sunday 29th November at 10.30pm to chart the way forward. I will put together some documents that will help this process to send to anyone interested.

The Mathew Hale Public Library is hosting another online seminar which I think will be of great interest next Wednesday 25th November at 7pm. Rev’d Peter Palmer is speaking on ‘Engaging Community’. See https://www.mathewhalepubliclibrary.com/events/2020/engaging-community-with-peter-palmer for more information (including the Zoom link).

I look forward to celebrating our services this weekend for the feast of Christ the King. We welcome on Sunday Bruce and Libby Hayes. The notice paper and service sheets for the Saturday evening online service and Sunday 9am service, streamed on Zoom, are attached.

With blessings for the week ahead.

Yours in Christ

Rev’d Timothy