Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
January/February 2006

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Baptist Church   |   Holy Trinity   |   Methodist Church
St Mary's   |   St Michael's   |   St Osmund's

Baptist Church

Time has become some-thing of an obsession. The consumer market is awash with time keeping and time planning devices and yet most people seem to have less time than ever. It's a precious commodity most of us feel seriously short of. The fact is that time – the way we think about it and the way we use it – needs, like every other aspect of life, to be redeemed. It's said that when a clock is hungry it goes back for seconds. We could do no better than going back to God and a life shaped by the Scriptures rather than dictated by our diary.

'Let us set our clock’s by God's,
And order our lives by His way,
And nothing can come and nothing can go
Too soon or too late in the day.'

It's to lay our lives and intentions before the Lord that we gather at the beginning of the year for our Annual Baptist Covenant Service. Shortly after, on Sunday 22nd January, 4pm, we will be hosting the annual Churches Together in Barnes Unity Service. Please do come and join in our time of celebration and thanksgiving. Also, remember, it's not too early to start thinking about joining one of this year's Lent Study Groups. Details will soon be available in the churches.

And finally remember, ‘Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana.’ Happy New Year.

Graham Pulham

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Holy Trinity

The Licensing Service of our new team vicar the Revd Jean Boulton-Reynolds was a beautiful and uplifting service. The refreshments served in the Church Hall afterwards surpassed all expectations!

We would like to thank our Bishop Richard Cheetham, Barnes Team Ministry clergy, our churchwardens John Richmond and Anthony Phillips, with special thanks to Rosemarie Pearce, Karen Slater (St Mary's Parish Office) and Pat Goldsmith (St Michael's Parish Office) for all the hard work and input which made the occasion such a success.

All the congregation at Holy Trinity are looking forward with the Revd Jean and her family to building up her ministry in hope and faith, and for our future growth together.

Our Christmas party in the Church Hall on 10th December was a great success, with an early visit from Father Christmas for the children.

Candlemas will be celebrated on 29th January at 10am with Parish Eucharist, and on 1st March we will mark Ash Wednesday with the Eucharist and Imposition of Ashes at 7.30pm.

Edwina Naughton

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Methodist Church

2006 is a very special year for us at the 'Church by the Pond'. In September we will be 100 years old, so we have designated the whole year as our Centenary year. A number of special events will be highlighted later – but to give you a quick preview:

From 23-25 June there will be a Flower Festival entitled 'Spirit of Barnes' – in which we hope the whole community will be involved. This will culminate in the Churches Together 'Celebration of Barnes' service.

In September/October there will be an exhibition telling our story, and this will cover the actual Centenary weekend, which is 23-24 September.
A recipe book will appear in due course – but NOW you can buy a copy of our Centenary Book The Church by the Pond available in Beaumonts Bookshop, or any of the churches.

And throughout the year we will be welcoming back previous ministers of the church and others who have a connection with us. On February 26 we have a visit from Clifford Johnson who was minister here from 1965 – 1971

It's food for thought that Methodists have been worshipping here and telling the story of the love of God for 100 years. We have a heritage of which we are justly proud – and a future for which we trust God.

Veronica Faulks

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St Mary's

Happy New Year!

Christmas is past and a new chapter in our lives opens before us in 2006. Did you enjoy it? Did you find the "true meaning of Christmas" amongst all the commercialism and over-indulgence? What is the "true meaning of Christmas"? More to the point, do you know anyone who claims not to know it? I suspect even the most hardened shopper and glutton will still believe that he knows what Christmas is really about. The "true meaning of Christmas" seems to me to be a phrase used by people who want to show that they are in some way spiritually superior. It happens in our churches too. I know quite a number of clergy who look out on filled churches at Christmas and immediately yield to the temptation of scolding them for not being there the rest of the year. Will a telling off make them come back in the New Year? Not likely. I believe that Christmas is our chance to show ourselves at our best and attract people to come back for that reason, not because of a moral lecture. It is for us to continue the miracle of the incarnation, taking Christ to every part of our society and culture, helping people to find his life born in them in their myriad diversity, not just expecting them to find him in the walls of our churches.

Ross Collins

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St Michael's Church

Music plays a very central part of our worship here at St Michael's and we are fortunate enough to have a dedicated and strong choir. They excelled themselves this year with our Advent carol service, which is always a high point in the liturgical life of St Michael's. It is also a service where all the churches in Barnes play a part followed by mulled wine and mince pies. This is a wonderful way to begin the Christian new year together.

This year as in the past St Michael's Nursery performed their own interpretation of the nativity, called The owl and the clever little King. There is probably nothing more wonderful than watching four-year-olds expressing in music and movement the wonder of Christmas; we did have the one distinguished shepherd who took a different route to the stable! Every year we are delighted by a new perspective written and composed by Lowell Herbert. We look forward to the day when they will all be published and offered to the wider church.

In the new year after Sunday Mass we will be having a brief service of Thanksgiving for the progress made on the building of the new centre. The walls are now up and there is a real sense of its size and style.

Paul Holland

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St Osmund's Church

Thanks to the efforts of parish and school, and the support of many friends, we were able to send £2,200 to Father Dan Cashman for mission parishes in Tanzania. His contact with us goes back to the 1980s; on December 20th he had been a priest in the Society of African Missions for forty years. Our titular feast always occurs in Advent so can never be observed on Sunday. The School came to lead us very prayerfully in our participation at Mass on December 5th. The approach of Advent had been marked by a penitential service at school on the previous Friday. These notes provide an opportunity to put on record the ecumenical element in our Carol Concert each year, and our own choir members' up-front presence in the recent highly acclaimed production of My Fair Lady by the Barnes Charity Players. With all that goes on during December we tend to have run out of steam once Christmas Day has passed. But the Christmas season with its grace spills over into the new year, so we should still have enough wind for more carols – particularly to mark the revelation through the Wise Men that Jesus is Saviour for all mankind.

Fiona Keen and Father Logan

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