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St. Paul’s Church Magazine December 2018 £1
St. Paul’s Church
Magazine
December 2018 £1
PARISH OF ST. PAUL
Church website: www.achurchnearyou.com/11422
School website: www.benjamin.lancsngfl.ac.uk
Vicar: Rev. Ian Enticott 433590
Churchwardens: Mr Terry Jones, 36 Cobham Road 232367
Mr Andrew Crowe, 9 Badgers Close 389072
Emeritus: Mr Alf Dearden, 82 Spencer Street 394301
Treasurer: Mr Terry Jones 232367
Organist: Mrs Kathleen Livesey 694720
SERVICES
Sunday: 9.15 a.m. Family Service
On Sunday all our young people and leaders are invited
into church for a welcome/prayer/short talk or activity
followed by Junior Church in Benjamin Hargreaves School
and Little Angels in the church hall.
Wednesday: 10.15 a.m. Holy Communion
Baptisms, Marriages and Funerals:
By arrangement with the Vicar
Rev. Ian Enticott: Mobile 07941 389621 433590
Rev. Paul McNally: Mobile 07816 491522
Reader Emeritus: Mrs Joan Clark233683
Pastoral Assistant: Mrs Alison Worrall 398413
Benjamin Hargreaves School:
Headteacher: Mrs Julie Nicol 232130
Church Hall: 233547
Safeguarding Officer: Mrs Kath Jones 232367
All I want for Christmas…
Dear friends, Christmas is a time for giving. You have probably already made numerous lists of presents to buy, and maybe been asked, “What do you want for Christmas?” We mull over our wish-lists to think of appropriate things that someone might want to give us. I‟m sure some of the things on those lists are more a dream than reality, but still, we plan and buy and wrap and hope. Christmas is a time for families. The only problem with that is the mess, the fall-outs, the ones with nowhere to go and no one to be with. The arguments over who watches what – even with multiple screens there are now more channels than ever to watch. Christmas is a time for carols. Well, maybe with some favourite Christmas songs thrown in for good measure. The in-store sound-tracks started so long ago you could be forgiven for thinking it must be New Year already. Christmas is a time for feasting. Christmas dinners, nights out with work colleagues or friends. All the festive things like mince pies, turkey and Brussels sprouts, Christmas pudding and plenty to drink. Christmas is a time for… the one who invites us to the best feast we will ever taste, where we join in praising God, where no one will be alone and where „family‟ are all those who recognise the greatest gift we have ever been given is Jesus, God with us. Christmas is a time for Christ.
Your friend and Vicar, Ian
"For many of us, Christmas brings up so many emotions, memories and expectations. We have one nativity story, but it can seem like we all have very different Christmases. "For you it might be a time of joy and togetherness. Or perhaps it‟s all about planning and to-do lists. Many others can find it a sad and lonely time – nagged by the feeling that your Christmas is not like those „perfect‟ ones we see in the media. "But just like the unexpected assortment of people who were invited to meet the baby Jesus, #FollowTheStar doesn‟t ask you to be perfect. It says: come just as you are to take the life-changing Christmas journey."
Archbishops Justin Welby & John Sentamu
Sign up for the daily readings from Christmas Eve to Epiphany via email at: www.churchofengland.org/followthestar and look out for the Follow The Star app from Aimer Media – available late November.
BAPTISM 18/11/18 Cole Dale Clark
BAPTISMAL ANNIVERSARIES
27/12/2015 Alfie Dyer 31/01/2016 Arlo McKenzie Burgess 15/01/2017 Aiden Joseph Brotherton 10/12/2017 Isaac Denis Robert Nuttall
AUTUMN FAIR 2018
Thank you to everyone who helped at or attended this year‟s fair. Special thanks to Hilary and her helpers in the Café who prepared some wonderful meals/snacks for our visitors who, this year, raised more than £350.
All the stalls were very colourful and attractive to tempt the visitors. The bric-a-brac and jewellery stalls were particularly popular. To date the fair has raised more than £1.600.
Next year we have decided to hold our Autumn Fair on Saturday 3rd
November (not at half-term) when hopefully, more of our Church family will be at home to support the fair.
CELEBRATE A LIFE SERVICE 2018
This year we combined our service to remember family and friends with a commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War 1. Our Church had been decorated beautifully by our Flower Ladies and the work of all the classes of Benjamin Hargreaves School who had been involved in a project about World War 1. All the displays featured poppies made from very different sources including plastic bottles. The children had studied poems written during the war and letters written from the Front as well as people from our Parish who had fought in the War. This year money raised from our Celebrate a life service has been donated to Help for the Heroes. Also a pamphlet about the people named on the reredos in our side chapel, prepared by Rev. Enid Briggs some years ago was published and sold to raise money for the appeal.
To date £501 has been raised for Help the Heroes.
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
Friday, 30th
November from 3.15 – 4.45pm Free admission
Benjamin Hargreaves Christmas Fair
There will be a variety of stalls including chocolate and bottle tombolas. Cakes, jewellery, mystery parcels, books, crackers and toys.
There will be a raffle and for younger children a bran tub and chance to see Father Christmas in his grotto. There will be games, face painting and competitions. Again this year children will have a chance to „Adopt a Pet for Christmas‟ Come to the Fair and find out more.
Toy Service, 2
nd December at 9.15 am.
All members of our Church and School families are again invited to donate a toy which will be given to a needy child in Hyndburn area. Local Rotary and Lions Clubs are organising the collection and distribution of the toys. For many years we have been overwhelmed by the generosity of our Church and School families. Again this year we hope to help some of the most needy families in our community.
Tuesday, 11 December 10 – 11.30
Advent Sherry Morning
Admission £1
Again this year we have planned a sherry morning with warm mince pies which, in the past, has been very popular.
Tuesday, 8th
January 2019
COFFEE MORNING from 10-11.30 am.
Admission £1
Sunday, 20th
January 2019 at 9.15 am
SONGS OF PRAISE . . . .
to celebrate the conversion of our Patron Saint, St. Paul. Our hymns will be accompanied by our organ or our brass ensemble. If you have a hymn you would like us to include please write the
first line on a slip and place it in the box at the back of Church before Christmas.
Sunday, 9
th December at 4.00pm Christingle
Sunday, 16
th December at 9.15a.m.
Nine lessons and Carols
Sunday, 16th
December 5 – 6p.m. Café Church “Carols by Candlelight”
Sunday, 23
rd December at 9.15 a.m.
Holy Communion, Junior Church and Little Angels
Monday, 24th
December 5-00pm
“NATIVITY”
Sunday, 9
th December at 4.00pm Christingle
Sunday, 16
th December at 9.15a.m.
Nine lessons and Carols
Sunday, 16th
December 5 – 6p.m. Café Church “Carols by Candlelight”
Sunday, 23
rd December at 9.15 a.m.
Holy Communion, Junior Church and Little Angels
Monday, 24th
December 5-00pm
“NATIVITY”
“HAPPY NEW YEAR”
Tuesday, 8th
January 2019
Coffee Morning from 10-11.30 am.
Admission £1
Sunday, 20th
January 2019 at 9.15 am
SONGS OF PRAISE . . . .
to celebrate the conversion of our Patron Saint, St. Paul. Our hymns will be accompanied by our organ or our brass ensemble.
If you have a hymn you would like us to include please write the first line on a slip and place it in the box at the back of Church before Christmas.
MOTHERS’ UNION AT ST. PAUL’S
During the last couple of months we have had two enlightening speakers.
In October Carol Ratcliffe came and spoke about a cruise her and her husband Michael (the former Vicar of St. Paul‟s Oswaldtwistle) had been on. She brought photographs and many mementos and laughter. At our November meeting we welcomed Sheila Fielding who spoke on the work of C.A.P. (Christians against Poverty) When we booked her ages ago, we felt that at a time when everything around us is gearing up for a fantastic Christmas, loads of gifts, family etc. it would be an eye opener to see not everybody sees Christmas or any day for that matter in the same light. For many it means hardship, loneliness and hunger. C.A.P. helps people who through no fault of their own are struggling with debts and one thing leads to another. The organisation isn‟t just in this country it‟s also in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. They organise Job Clubs and provide food for families. Whilst it‟s a Christian organisation they don‟t push attending Church etc. but going off the video she showed regarding one family they did start getting involved with the Church through Sunday School etc. I suppose as we said there but for the grace of God go I. It‟s caring at the highest level and doing what Jesus would do. The theme was from Darkness to Light. Our next meeting is our meal at Christmas which is being organised by the Flower Ladies and is being held in the Church Hall. We are so grateful to them and the menu looks brilliant. So now as we approach Christmas can we wish you all a Very Happy and Peaceful time to you and those you love and care for but not forgetting in all the commercial hype the baby born in the stable 2000 years ago because to be fair that‟s what its all abut. A couple of week ago I was given a book called Christmas uncut. What really happened and why it really matters. I was told it was a humorous book. It is in parts especially when memories of Nativity Plays were mentioned and it asks many questions of what we actually believe happened and what the reality of the situation was for Mary, Joseph and their families.; Mary didn‟t question she trusted God and the message in the book is Believe the Good News.
Take care, and for 2019 the thoughts from our Mothers’ Union are, that ‘We wish for you, everything that you wish for yourself and families. WE ask you to remember those who are struggling in any way and
WE thank God for sending us his Son to show us the way.
“THANKS FOR ASKING”
Following all the wartime coverage last month I have been asked to give details of my “active service”. Being of a modest disposition I shall be brief. I was called up soon after my eighteenth birthday and volunteered to join the Royal Navy and was despatched to the stone frigate ”HMS Ganges” to be knocked into shape. Afterwards I was selected to join the new and then secret band of Radar Operators. I was initiated into the magic of Radar at another stone frigate “HMS Valkyrie” in the Isle of Man. I was then despatched promptly to begin my seagoing days (and mostly nights) to become Lt. Commander Peter Scott's Radar Operator on his Flotilla Leading Steam Gunboat “HMS Grey Goose.” We sailed from the little Sussex port of Newhaven. We operated mostly after dark seeking enemy shipping off the coast of
Occupied France in order to sink them by torpedo or gunfire. The Germans did not like this and retaliated powerfully. We also sometimes raced along the
“battle zone” between Calais and Cherbourg after dark to bring the German coastal big guns into action so as to allow our RAF spotter planes to pinpoint their positions for future mass bomber raids prior to D Day still a year away. The Steam Gunboats were attached to the United States Navy under Admiral Kirk for the rest of their service from D-Day onward. Our D-Day task was to escort a convoy of old surplus merchant ships across the channel to be scuttled off “Omaha” beach head once the coast was clear, so as to provide a breakwater for following landings. By the time we arrived most of the terrible fight to gain a foothold on “Omaha” was over. We then proceeded to patrol at night off the Cherbourg peninsula to prevent German fast E. Boats penetrating the landings area. After about three weeks of this an almighty storm blew in from the Atlantic and we were so hammered and battered
by huge waves we had to retire to Southampton for repairs. The crew was paid off and all went their various ways to different ships. Now the second part of my “war” began. I found myself leaving the Gairloch in Scotland in a convoy of troopships and expecting to end up in the Far East to fight the Japs. I was wrong. As we reached Malta, the ship I was on peeled off and entered Valetta harbour. In the harbour was an American Liberty cargo ship and on her upper deck were two magnificent brand new Motor Torpedo Boats brought over from the States to join the Royal Navy under the Lend Lease arrangements. I was to be radar operator on one of them with a crew of eight men and two officers. My radar was of the very latest model and a vastly more efficient piece of equipment than the one I had struggled with on “Grey Goose.” This was a very different and more enjoyable sort of war. The Germans were on the run and we were chasing. It was also much warmer. We roared up the coast of Italy to the battered port of Ancona which was our attack base. Briefly now, our MTB flotilla did a lot of damage to German shipping off the Adriatic coast and around the Istrian Peninsula and it was not so cold and nasty as the English Channel which was still a very dangerous place. When the war ended we were still there. The MTB's were returned to the US Navy and in order to keep me busy I was sent to a Fleet Minesweeper to start clearing up the mass of sea mines off the North African coast. I sailed home from Malta in the summer of 1946 on the cruiser HMS Sirius. This gave me a taste of BIG SHIP NAVY (No thanks) and then I was demobbed. My demob suit was awful. Alvin.
Sailing In a previous edition of the magazine we published an article by Joan Clark; „that the church is a boat which shelters and guides us as we journey through Life.‟ Fifty years ago in the summer of 1968 Robin Knox-Johnson was sailing down the Atlantic on his yacht Sulaili taking part in
the Sunday Times „Golden Globe Race‟ to become the first man to sail non-stop and single handed round the world. Knox-Johnson in 1968 and St. Paul‟s Church in 2018 both had the same problem. How to keep the boat water tight. Suhaili was carvel built; the planks of wood forming the hull are secured one by one onto the frame
and butted together with packing between and a water resistant fluid brushed in. The boat pictured here was being built in the same way when we visited Sur in Oman in 2011. The frame supporting the smooth carvel hull can be clearly seen. The traditional boat building skills are still alive.
Sulaili’s Journey June 1968:
She is taking in more water than she should be. I have a feeling it is coming in
about the plank next to the keel. ….12 days later we ran into a calm patch and I
reduced sail. Donning a mask and snorkel, I dived overside and found a large gap
along the seam [between two planks] and as the boat pitched and rolled I could
see the gap opening and closing slightly. The answer was to caulk the seam, not
easy to do 5 feet below the waterline.
So far, although I had kept glancing nervously about me whilst in the water, I had
seen no fish at all. But whilst having a coffee break, [on board] I suddenly
noticed a lean grey shape moving sinuously past the boat. The sharks had found
us at last.
St. Paul‟s Log: Likewise our job in church required sealing a gap; the one between the west window and the stonework. The lead flashing had worked loose and strong westerly gales had been driving rain under the flashing and down the inside wall. The gap will be closed and the
surrounding wall – inside and out - will be sealed to prevent rain soaking through.
Sulaili’s Journey continues: Day 217 January 1969
It’s bitterly cold outside and unless we get some help from the current we won’t
pass the Horn till about midnight.
Day 218 we’ve passed the Horn!!!
Why did Robin Knox-Johnson want to take part in the race? His initial response is recorded in his book „I didn’t want a French sailor to take the glory’. During his nine months alone this first thought remained but receded to the back of his mind because what he found as he dug deeper into his physical and mental reserves was his true self. Thoughts whilst sailing alone:
The sea and ships are great levellers. All share the same risks in a storm and no
earthly influence will select you above the rest to be saved. It is not surprising
seamen think about the cause of these forces and in some cases put their trust in
the existence of a Superior Being. Robin Knox-Johnson’s philosophy was based
on the phrase ‘God helps those who help themselves’. Do all you can but put your
trust in God. Throughout his voyage he never felt completely alone - God was
with him. [ Extracts from A World of My Own by Robin Knox-Johnson]
Bernard Moitessier also joined the race; his boat was named Joshua.
An incident during Joshua’s journey:
None knew what to expect and how they would react in these lonely seas. During
his voyage he set a course round Stewart Island to avoid the reefs of South Trap,
the last landfall of New Zealand. A large school of porpoises appeared. Keeping
pace with the boat they gave a synchronised swimming display the like of which
he had never seen before. Later the horizon became obscured by dark threatening
clouds and twenty-five of the porpoises formed up in a line alongside the boat,
rushing from stern to bow, then veering off sharply to the right. They continued
to do this again and again whilst the others swam around in a very agitated
manner beating their tails on the water. Moitessier finally looked at his compass
and discovered the wind had shifted driving his boat towards the reefs. He
changed course to follow the line of the twenty-five and immediately they and all
the other porpoises calmed down and became playful again. They stayed with the
boat until it was safely past the reefs and then disappeared. [an extract from A Voyage For Madmen by Peter Nichols]
What a wonderful experience however we try to explain it.
On the Allotment
Coming through the gate,
I cannot
remember when the trees have been so beautiful and colourful.
Leaves are knee deep in places and today AGAIN I’ve been on leaf
duty, collecting leaves for the compost bins.
I did however have some nice company with our little robin who
sung all afternoon. This reminded me of another very friendly Robin
during one winter. No.1 visited this little bird every day rain or shine
to make sure of water and tit bits, he became so friendly he was
waiting at the gate to welcome him each day.
The allotment is looking a bit empty as I’ve stripped down bean
poles and wigwams and I’m replanning my garden area. I’ve removed
Iris, geraniums, lupins and cosmos etc. and I hope to plant some
colourful bulbs next week.
There is still a splash of colour at the gate as rose-hips are still
falling from the tree.
Talking of trees a huge hawthorn tree had to be cut down and we
had a grandstand view from our allotment.
To all our friends we wish you Joy and Peace at Christmas, and
Health and happiness in the New Year.
Gladys and No.1
Dear Rod, Everyone wishes you a Very Happy Christmas and thanks for all the years of kindness we all shared together at St. Paul’s.
December 20th
Enjoy your Birthday also with your friends and may the year ahead be a happy one for you.
St. PAUL’S CHURCH
Barnfield Street, Accrington
CoffeeMorning
Tuesday, 8th
January
10 - 11.30 am
Book Stall and Raffle
In aid of Church funds
Admission £1
This term we have enjoyed a range of fun-filled activities, Baking
Pizza pinwheels, Wooden spoon scarecrows and edible catapults to
name but a few.
We get really excited this time of
year and have enjoyed making
Bonfire treats, and lots of games
and crafts.
Of course, Christmas is our
favourite time and we have already written our letters to Father
Christmas.
The Rainbows are now waiting in anticipation for our Very Special
Guest! . . . . (Pssst, don’t tell anyone!)
and
“Very Best Wishes for the New Year”
from
The Brownies and Leaders at St. Paul’s
Mission Statement
St. Paul's serves the town of Accrington and the surrounding area, living by
and communicating the message of Jesus Christ
Safeguarding
The welfare of any person who is or feels vulnerable - child or adult- is of the
greatest importance to us. Safeguarding them means protecting their health,
wellbeing and keeping them safe from harm, abuse or neglect. We have church
members who will respond to signs of abuse particularly in children and young
people and work to prevent this happening. We will also take care to identify
where a person may present a risk to others, and offer support to them whilst
taking steps to mitigate such risks.
Church Organisations
Junior Church Mrs Lara McNally
Mothers Union 7.30 p.m. 2nd
Tuesday in month
Enrolling Member Mrs Dorothy Dearden 394301
Guides Wednesday in the Church Hall
Mrs Jill Lamont 236803
Brownies Thursday in the Church hall
Kelly Johnson 07595981190
Rainbows Monday in the Church Hall
(age 5-7) Mrs Sarah Parkinson 389283
Group Scout Leader Gerry Tipling 07942042813
Cub Scouts Tuesday in the Church Hall
(age 8-10½) Donna Emmett 07866746874
Scouts Mr Mark Longworth 07393933713
(age 10-14)
Beavers Tuesday in the school
(age 6-8) Karen/Gerry Tipling 07942042813
Flowers Mrs Hilary Davies 301286
Keep Fit Monday in the Church Hall 235791
Magazine Editor Mrs Wendy Crowe 235791
e-mail: [email protected]
Deputy Church Wardens
David Pratt 395156 David Southwell 871699 Gerald Tipling800335
Remembrance Sunday display
