A Word from canon sue
When I was a child, every church featuring in my life, in rural Warwickshire, industrial Yorkshire and suburban Yorkshire, all had three services each Sunday. It was a time you will all remember, when frankly there wasn’t a lot going on on a Sunday. Certainly, no shopping. In some places the same people went to two of the services, one in a morning and to Evensong at 6.30.
As a young adult I moved to Hagley. ......Where there were for a long time, separate congregations at the 8am, 10/10.30 service and Evensong at 6.30. Most though went to the mid-morning service. And I guess that is much the same still.
When I began ministry, in five rural villages, I was told The Forsyth Saga in the 60’s killed off Evensong in rural churches. Of course, it lingers in places but is far from the norm except in really big churches.
Nowadays, with far more things for people to do on a Sunday, and few wanting to get up early for an 8 am Communion, most people who go to church, go sometime later in the morning. Times change, but the local churches continue much as they have for the last hundreds of years...locally these are our services; Churchill has two morning services a month at 10 am, Broome has two services at 9am and one at 10 am. Belbroughton has a service every Sunday of differing types but all at 11.15, Fairfield has three morning services at 11.15 and one evening Communion service on the third Sunday of the month, that’s at 4.30 in the winter and 6.30 in the
summer. Clent has a service every Sunday all at differing times.....
Blakedown has three morning services at 10. But it has also a very different kind of service at 4 pm on the fourth Sunday of the month. This is an Iona Service.
It is important that in this difficult time, when so many people are really worried about Coronavirus that our churches continue to be havens for stressed people to find some peace and tranquility. In all of our churches we offer thanks and praise to God for the very many blessings surrounding us.....our families and friends, our homes, the daffodils and hedges springing into leaf. And we hear from the Scriptures, the stories of enduring value, that form the people of God into people wanting to love and serve him and his world. We sing generally...and how good is that for all of us!
It’s great for our well-being.
Now this piece also wants to talk about the Iona Service at Blakedown.
Iona is a small island accessible by ferry from the Scottish Island of Mull. It has been a holy island since St Cuthbert landed there, exiled from CHRISTIAN Ireland in 563 with twelve other Irish monks. He founded an abbey there and that was effectively a mission station for the rest of Scotland and early medieval northern England.
His Abbey was attacked long after his death in 597, by the Vikings who visited with such mayhem and disorder in 794. But before then, the nature focussed, awareness that God is in everything and every activity style of Christianity Cuthbert and his followers had practised was outlawed at the Synod of Whitby in 664.
In a seventh century version of a Referendum on the European Union, the Church in Britain decided to become Roman, European, when there was only the Roman Catholic and Orthodox varieties of Christianity.
And for centuries Iona was just a small Scottish island where sheep far outnumber humans.
Then in 1938, a Scottish minister , George McLeod, founded the Iona Community, an ecumenical Christian Community of men and women who try to make their faith and worship relevant to everyday life. Now, thousands of visitors annually experience the ‘thin space’ of Iona, the beauty, the absence of cars but the rootedness of the faith we share.
Come and join us for ecumenical locally rooted worship in the Iona Service, on every fourth Sunday at Blakedown, and be part of something predating many centuries but utterly up to date.
Prayers and Blessings
Canon Sue.
As a young adult I moved to Hagley. ......Where there were for a long time, separate congregations at the 8am, 10/10.30 service and Evensong at 6.30. Most though went to the mid-morning service. And I guess that is much the same still.
When I began ministry, in five rural villages, I was told The Forsyth Saga in the 60’s killed off Evensong in rural churches. Of course, it lingers in places but is far from the norm except in really big churches.
Nowadays, with far more things for people to do on a Sunday, and few wanting to get up early for an 8 am Communion, most people who go to church, go sometime later in the morning. Times change, but the local churches continue much as they have for the last hundreds of years...locally these are our services; Churchill has two morning services a month at 10 am, Broome has two services at 9am and one at 10 am. Belbroughton has a service every Sunday of differing types but all at 11.15, Fairfield has three morning services at 11.15 and one evening Communion service on the third Sunday of the month, that’s at 4.30 in the winter and 6.30 in the
summer. Clent has a service every Sunday all at differing times.....
Blakedown has three morning services at 10. But it has also a very different kind of service at 4 pm on the fourth Sunday of the month. This is an Iona Service.
It is important that in this difficult time, when so many people are really worried about Coronavirus that our churches continue to be havens for stressed people to find some peace and tranquility. In all of our churches we offer thanks and praise to God for the very many blessings surrounding us.....our families and friends, our homes, the daffodils and hedges springing into leaf. And we hear from the Scriptures, the stories of enduring value, that form the people of God into people wanting to love and serve him and his world. We sing generally...and how good is that for all of us!
It’s great for our well-being.
Now this piece also wants to talk about the Iona Service at Blakedown.
Iona is a small island accessible by ferry from the Scottish Island of Mull. It has been a holy island since St Cuthbert landed there, exiled from CHRISTIAN Ireland in 563 with twelve other Irish monks. He founded an abbey there and that was effectively a mission station for the rest of Scotland and early medieval northern England.
His Abbey was attacked long after his death in 597, by the Vikings who visited with such mayhem and disorder in 794. But before then, the nature focussed, awareness that God is in everything and every activity style of Christianity Cuthbert and his followers had practised was outlawed at the Synod of Whitby in 664.
In a seventh century version of a Referendum on the European Union, the Church in Britain decided to become Roman, European, when there was only the Roman Catholic and Orthodox varieties of Christianity.
And for centuries Iona was just a small Scottish island where sheep far outnumber humans.
Then in 1938, a Scottish minister , George McLeod, founded the Iona Community, an ecumenical Christian Community of men and women who try to make their faith and worship relevant to everyday life. Now, thousands of visitors annually experience the ‘thin space’ of Iona, the beauty, the absence of cars but the rootedness of the faith we share.
Come and join us for ecumenical locally rooted worship in the Iona Service, on every fourth Sunday at Blakedown, and be part of something predating many centuries but utterly up to date.
Prayers and Blessings
Canon Sue.