There are
several changes for you to note. One
change which needs explaining here is “P3”.
It stands for “Papers, Prayer and Praise”.
This is not a service
but a time to get together to browse the Sunday papers and chat and pray about
issues considered important. This
will be very chilled. We’ll
listen to some decent worship music or may sing some songs – whatever
emerges. Good coffee and hot choc
should be important factors too. More
publicity for this will follow separately.
Another thing to note is the evening slot each week will be at 7pm.
Experiment 2:
Congregational Leadership Teams
The second
experiment involves trying to develop one congregational leadership team for
each of our services (ie a team for 8am, a team for 10am and a team for 7pm).
Each will take responsibility for the organising, planning and delivery
of its service, as well as praying for it and overseeing its overall shape and
direction. The development of
these teams will be a gradual process and, where needed, will involve “training”
along the way.
The main aims
are to develop the way we worship God through more diverse and co-ordinated
input, and to build capacity (develop gifts and strengths) in individuals at
Trinity.
As an example of what is being suggested, the team for the 10am service is
likely to be the biggest. It will,
ideally, include 2-3 people who will lead the services (that is taking it in
turns), 2-3 people who’ll get involved with preaching, someone to develop
the prayer life of the service (before, during and after it), and someone who’ll
oversee the music. I’ll be in
each team and team members can wear more than one hat at a time, so the prayer
person could lead and/or preach, etc. The
team will liaise with
Junior
Church
and also deal with “Everybody Slots” and whatever else crops up from time
to time. Visiting ministers will
be invited to liaise with the relevant team and, if they wish, can either take
full responsibility for their particular service or work with the team. Teams
for the other services will, necessarily, be smaller to start with.
If you have questions, do ask me. Trinity’s
Leadership Team will be watching this experiment.
By March, when the experiment begins, the teams will NOT be up and
running. It will take time to grow
them.
I hope you like these ideas. Please
do pray for and about them.
Every blessing
Jon S
By
the time this magazine appears, we shall almost be in Lent, a season during
which many Christians feel the need to set apart time for God in a special
way. Some may like to join with
others in a Lent group – an excellent idea.
Others may prefer to reflect more privately on the period leading up to
Easter. But where to find help in
doing this?
Trinity’s
Library could be the place to find it. We
have about 25 books centred on Lent: some are conventional books, written with
the Lenten experience in mind, while others offer readings/reflections for
each day in turn. Why not have a
look and see if one of them appeals to you?
The
library is on one of the walls in the new chapel, open whenever the church is
open, and you will find the Lent books in the section labelled “Meditations,
Readings…”.
Borrowing
is simple and confidential.
Gaynor
Davies
Saturday
8 March
10am
We
are struggling to find storage space in the church, so we will be
reorganising the walk-in cupboard and throwing out anything that is not
essential.
If
you have things stored there, please arrange for someone from your group to
attend, to help decide what to keep.
Jonathan
will be directing proceedings on the day.
In
accordance with the Church Representation Rules, the Trinity Church Electoral
Roll is to be revised before the Annual General Meeting. This
is a requirement of the Church of England and the number of people listed on
the Electoral Roll is used by the Diocese of Oxford as a measure of the size
of Trinity and therefore influences the amount of ministerial support we get
and the size of our Parish Share.
Last
year, the Electoral Roll was completely revised and the number of people on
the Roll was about 160, whereas it had previously been about 240; we think
that the appropriate size is close to 250 and therefore we must take the
opportunity of this year’s revision to increase the number on the Roll. The
procedure is as follows:
The
Electoral Roll list from last year will be posted on notice boards, together
with a notice announcing the revision of the Electoral Roll. Copies
of application forms for inclusion on the Electoral Roll will be available and
we ask everyone whose name is not on the existing Roll to consider completing
an application to be included on the revised Roll. Please
do fill up an application form if you possibly can and give it to the Church
Secretary (Roger), the Minister (Jon) or the Church Administrator (Margaret). Completed
forms may also be left on Margaret’s desk in the vestry.
The
revised Roll, including all new applications, will be displayed for 14 days
before the Annual General Meeting, at which the new Roll will be approved.
Roger
Mead
Church
Secretary
Thank
you to all who supported the Film Evening and thanks to Geoff and Anna Addis
for organising it. The event
raised £128 for the Buildings Fund.
Church
Council have looked at the job of the Church Secretary, in the context of the
need to find and appoint a new Church Secretary at the Annual Meeting on 10
March. Church Council have agreed
that the job is now far too large for one person and, just as we did for the
job of Treasurer, it is necessary to separate out some parts of the present
job, to be done by persons yet to be identified, to leave a manageable job for
the new Church Secretary.
The
five components for “contracting out” are:
(1)(2)(3)
Receiving correspondence from denominations, responding by providing
information as and when requested, distributing information and papers within
Trinity, and attending meetings as a Trinity representative.
(Church
of England, Methodist, United Reformed Church)
(4)
Organising Church Appointments, which includes maintaining the Appointments
File, identifying vacancies to be filled, encouraging nomination, volunteering
and interest in taking on appointments, providing information on notice boards
and the magazine and enabling the elections and appointments at Church
Meetings.
(5)
Annual Reports. This involves all aspects of the commissioning, writing,
collating and production of the set of annual reports which are presented in
draft to the February Church Council and in their final form at the AGM.
Each
of the five jobs is, I believe, a reasonable bite size and would require
someone with a good knowledge of Trinity and Trinity people.
The remaining job for the Church Secretary would involve the
organisation of meetings of Church Council, Church Meeting and the Staffing
Committee, monitoring the work of committees for potential report to Church
Council or Church Meeting, together with the more general responsibilities of
providing lay leadership, both as Church Secretary and Churchwarden.
Please
will you all think very seriously whether you could take on one of the five
jobs and also, of course, whether you would be willing to be nominated for
election as Church Secretary. Please
talk to our minister, Jon, to me or to Richard Cocks if you could be
interested in any of the jobs or would like to know more about them.
Roger
Mead
It
was 2 years ago, in January 2006, that a group of us were in church and
talking about the great trip we all had together to see the Oberammergau
Passion Play in 2000. Before I
knew it, I had a new job! We went
with McCabe Pilgrimages the last time, so I contacted them again and here we
are now, provisionally booked!
I
have put up all of the information about the trip on the notice board in the
church hall, to the right of the kitchen hatch. So,
if you are interested, there is a picture of the hotel Arzlerhof, where we
shall be staying. It is a 4*
hotel, which includes an extensive indoor swimming complex.
The hotel is in a quiet location overlooking the
village
of
Imst
, surrounded by mountains.
Innsbruck
is close by and guided walks can be arranged from the hotel doorstep.
Rooms are twin-bedded, with balcony, shower, WC, phone and television.
We
shall be going to the Passion Play in the middle of our stay; however a
specially negotiated feature is that we will not have to check out of our room
at the resort hotel. This means
that we can leave our main luggage in our rooms and just take an overnight bag
to the play!
We
will travel on Monday 12 July, via Heathrow and Munich.
Our trip to
Oberammergau
will be on the morning of Friday 16th and should arrive
mid-morning, as it is about a 2 hour coach trip.
We will be given lunch on arrival.
The duration of the performance is five hours, with a 3 hour break for
dinner in the middle. It will run
from 2.30pm to 5pm, interval, then 8pm to 10.30pm.
We shall spend that night in the village, with Saturday morning there,
before travelling back to our hotel on Saturday afternoon.
We will have the weekend there, before returning home on Monday 19
July. There will be optional
excursions available on other days.
For
any who might not have heard of Oberammergau before, here is a brief
explanation. Towards the end of
the Thirty Years War, there was an outbreak of the plague in
Bavaria
. The elders of the
village
of
Oberammergau
, in an effort to protect their mountain village, decided to seal it off from
outside contact. They were too
late, however, as an itinerant worker had returned, bringing the plague with
him. This swept through the
village; whereupon the people solemnly vowed that, if God would show His
compassion and lift the scourge, every ten years they would assemble and enact
the Passion of our Lord. The
plague left the village in 1633 and, as a perpetual thanksgiving and
reaffirmation of faith, the villagers of Oberammergau have performed the
Passion Play at regular intervals ever since!
So,
this will be an 8 day holiday at half board.
We will fly from Heathrow to
Munich
on Monday 12 July 2010 and return on Monday 19 July.
The final cost is to be confirmed but should be about £995 each.
There is a single room supplement of £70 for the hotel Arzlerhof.
Travel insurance is offered, with a premium expected to be around £30.
I
have provisionally booked 45 places, which is the maximum group number.
I have about 28/30 on my list just now and have made an offer to Saint
Nicolas’ Church to see if anyone would like to join us.
I will be sent booking forms in March, when I will then ask everyone
for a deposit of £200. So, time
is marching on and Easter will soon be upon us.
They will keep the places open to me for a few months, providing we
send half the booking forms and cheques in April.
So, if you want any more information or have any questions, please do
get in touch with me. We all had a
great time in 2000, so would be pleased to have you join us.
Jill
Ramsden
Email
jill.ramsden(at)talk21.com
There
will be no “Prayer and Praise” meetings in the chapel during February.
Everyone
is encouraged to join a Lent group instead.
(A
‘thank you’ for the shoe box gifts that we gave in November)
“Wonderful
reports are arriving from our teams distributing shoe boxes to some of the
poorest children in Belarus, Serbia and Romania. Many
of our overseas partners are lost for words when they see the extraordinary
impact these shoe boxes are having on some of the poorest and most needy
children. Never before have they
felt such intense joy and exuberant hugs from children - many of whom have
been deprived of love during their young lives. I can't thank you enough for making these special moments
possible. Your
shoe box gifts are a powerful reminder to these children they are not
forgotten this Christmas.”
For
more information, please see the Website: www.samaritanspurse.uk.com
The
Annual General Church Meeting for Trinity Church will be held at Trinity
Church on Monday 10 March 2008 at 8.00pm. All
members of the church, including all those who are regular members of the
worshipping congregation and all parishioners, are invited to attend the
meeting, which makes important decisions affecting the life of
Trinity
Church
.
The
formal agenda is provided below. In
addition to the normal business of the AGM, there are important items
concerned with changes to our pattern of worship, an update (?final) on the
Building Project and the sanctuary orientation. The
business of the AGM should be of concern to all members of the congregation
and we hope that everyone will make an effort to be present for this very
important meeting.
Roger
Mead
Church
Secretary
TRINITY
CHURCH MEETING
THE
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
(incorporating
the Annual Parochial Meeting and the Annual Meeting of Parishioners)
MONDAY
10 MARCH 2008
AGENDA
8.00
OPENING WORSHIP
8.10
MINUTES OF LAST MEETING (10 December)
MATTERS ARISING
ANY OTHER BUSINESS
8.20
PASTORAL REPORT
8.25
ANNUAL REPORTS
8.35
FINANCIAL REPORT
8.45
PATTERNS OF WORSHIP
9.10
Refreshments
9.25
ELECTIONS and APPOINTMENTS
includes Annual Parochial Church Meeting
and Annual Meeting of Parishioners
9.40
BUILDING PROJECT UPDATE
9.50
SANCTUARY ORIENTATION
10.00
Close
The
list below includes all those appointments whose term comes to an end in March
2008, or which are currently vacant. Please
tell me, Richard or Jon of any position which you would be interested to fill.
Roger
Mead
