NOTICES

EVENTS

If you want a notice put in the weekly bulletin, please contact Mandy Lewis (see emails section of the Contacts page).

Listening to God conference

ROCK SOLID Ready for the Fight: “Ephesians – the user manual for Kingdom growth today.”
You are invited to attend a conference organised by The Well with guest speaker Gordon Hickson, Associate Minister of St Aldate’s Oxford.
Fri 26th June (7.30pm-9.45pm) and Sat 27th June (9.45am-9.45pm) at The Town Hall, Leamington Spa.
Cost is £22.50 for the whole event, but there are concessions available.
Tel: 01926 888003 or email: contact@wellhealing.org

Steph and Geoff Concert

Outreach Singers Concert in aid of the Leamington Christian Mission (Steph & Geoff) on Saturday 27 June 2009 at 7.30 pm at St Mark's Church Hall, Rugby Road in Leamington Spa.  Tickets £6.00, please speak to Wendy Green on 01926 427580.

Concert by Village Voices Choir

St. Lawrence Church, Napton on the Hill on Friday 3rd July 2009, 7.30 pm
There will be a retiring collection for the church extension project.
Free glass of wine.

Royal Show Bucket Volunteers Needed

The Arthur Rank Centre is looking for volunteers to help with a bucket collection for just 2 hours at the end of each day of the Royal Show, 7 - 10 July. In return you can have a FREE day out at the last Royal Show (there won't be any more) and afternoon tea at the Arthur Rank Centre! You can offer to do 1 day or more, you will get a free ticket each day. Join the friendliest group of people on the showground fundraising for the ARC -supporting communities, churches and education in the countryside. If you are interested please call 024 7685 3060 and ask for Miri or Kathryn.
 
Gordon Giltrap

Tickets and details available from Bishops Itchington Vicarage (613466) or by email: Louise@kerrins.net .

OTHER NOTICES

Revd Peter Crooks, MBE

We are delighted to learn that Peter Crooks, Tim's predecessor, has been given an MBE in the Queen's birthday honours 'for service to seafarers and the community, Yemen'. Congratulations to him - I'm sure it is richly deserved.

Signposts for the Future

The Bishop of Coventry has written a booklet in which he writes his thoughts about the future of the diocese. Tim's summary, and a link to the whole document, is available HERE.

Foundations 21

Foundations21 is a resource for discipleship and lifelong Christian learning. It explores twelve key building blocks of the Christian faith - including prayer, the cross and mission - with a flexible blend of web-based study, group interaction and personal application. Foundations21 establishes and builds on firm foundations for spiritual growth, with increasing levels of depth within the material. It is now available free - click HERE for more details.

'Rain Tax'

The 'rain tax' petition has attracted more than 45,000 signatures on the Downing Street petition site making it the biggest electronic petition to be submitted to the Prime Minister in 2009. See http://www.dontdrainus.org/ for more details.

A Question for Churches

In Coventry since October 2004 at the Peace House we have provided a night shelter for people who fled to Britain in search of sanctuary and were refused. Banned from working legally and unable to claim any benefits they depend mainly on the support of friends and little bits of work they may find. Those little bits of work are increasingly difficult to come by and we are seeing more and more people in need of our shelter. We frequently have to turn people away despite the fact that the train and bus stations now shut at night. Unfortunately the increase in need has been met by a decrease in support in terms of food. Until recently the Sikh temple in Harnall Lane very kindly gave us hot curry and chapattis every weekday evening but they cannot do this any more. We also get some food from Fareshare which collects and redistributes food with a short shelf life to homeless charities. Their costs have risen and they now need to charge us. We do not have enough money for daily living needs so will have to stop taking that food too. Can your church help us by either cooking a vegetarian evening meal for 20 people once a month or donating £25 to pay for a meal once a month?

If you can help please contact me, Penny Walker, on 02476 664616 or email info@covpeacehouse.org.uk or write to me at The Peace House, 311 Stoney Stanton Road, Coventry CV6 5DS. If you want to send a donation please make the cheque payable to The Night Shelter. If you would like to set up a standing order I will send you the bank details. THANK YOU.

Pilgrim Puppets


For details of current bookings please click HERE



Radford Semele Church Fire

Rev Martin Green writes (February 2009):

First, may I apologise for the gap since the last Bulletin I issued in November. The trouble is, as you will have noticed, there has been very little activity at the church, except the replacing of the plastic sheeting over the tower roof whenever the wind has torn it off!
The current snowy weather reminds me of the snow we had last April, just a few weeks after the fire, when it looked quite stark and ominous – that was when the photo was taken that was on our Christmas card. (Thanks to Fiona who took the pictures …)

You will, I hope, be pleased to know that in this apparent absence of action, we have been busy behind the scenes, preparing detailed documents that will form the basis for the insurance company settlement. This has now been submitted, and I am anticipating that once their engineers have looked over the paperwork, we shall enter a not-too-lengthy process of negotiation to reach an agreed settlement.
Once this is done, we will know what budget we have to work with to rebuild the church.

Alongside this, we have been exploring the next stages in rebuilding, and the architect has been working on an initial brief gathered together from a comprehensive survey we did some months ago with church members.
Some of the important elements which we hope will be part of the new church are as follows :

•    The view of the church from the main road should remain unchanged
•    The new church should have toilet facilities and basic kitchen facilities (currently in the old church room, which is on its last legs)
•    There should be more flexibility within the building so that it can be used more during the week by the local community (without compromising the excellent facilities already in the village).
•    There should be some basic office facilities for future incumbents (currently a deteriorating shed in the garden of the Vicarage !)
•    There should be the opportunity to have the church open more during the week for people to visit for pastoral and spiritual needs.
•    We should use sustainable energy sources for heating and lighting where possible.

Basically, this brings together the facilities that are currently in the old church room and the shed into one place, providing more regular access and more flexible use for the church and community.
There will of course be some structural differences – it is almost certain that we will not be able to replace all the stained glass windows with the original designs, though the Millennium window can be remade as it was. Modern building regulations will also determine how we proceed with construction, especially for these extra facilities.

At the moment, these are ideas rather than specific plans, but once permissions have been given to go ahead with this idea and detailed plans are drawn up, there will be a public consultation to present these plans and fine-tune any specifics. I will, of course, let everyone know when that will be once we get to that stage. 
In the meantime, if anyone has any creative suggestions, do please get in touch (email is probably best if you can – revmcg@kerrins.net) and we can add them to the general discussions.

The restoration of St Nicholas Church gives us the opportunity to provide a thoughtful and prayerful facility for the village which can be used, enjoyed and loved by the community for future generations. Do please pray for us as we move ahead slowly, even when you can’t see anything happening at the church – and thank you once again for all your support.

With my best wishes

Martin

Open times for the Churchyard

The churchyard will be open for visitors on Sundays from 2.30pm to 3.30pm.

The St Nicholas Church Restoration Fund

Any donations can be sent through Rev Martin Green, 1 Manor Rd, Bishops Itchington, Warks. CV47 2QJ – please enclose a SAE for an acknowledgement,  and please gift-aid your donation if you can.

To download the latest bulletin (.pdf) please click HERE.
(To download previous bulletins please click on the number:  01   02  03   04   05   06
07   08)

A prophetic message for today?

Recent events have reminded Tim of something he wrote back in February 2003 during a time of prayer. Please pray that if it needs to be acted on, it will be. Click HERE for a Word document (37 Kb) giving details.