Windsor Team Ministry

Midweek Services in the New Windsor Team Ministry

There are no regular midweek services in the week after Christmas.

9am Monday Morning Prayer - All Saints (Frances Road)

9:30am Tuesday Eucharist - Clewer St Stephen (Vansittart Road)

10am Wednesday Holy Communion - Holy Trinity (Claremont Rd & Trinity Pl)

12pm Thursday Eucharist - St Agnes (St Leonard's Road)

9am Friday Morning Prayer - All Saints (Frances Road)

New Website

Thank you for visiting our website - we're sorry we're no longer updating it - please use www.windsorchurches.org.uk to connect to the latest information about the Church of England churches in central Windsor. For specific information about churches within the benefice please use one of the following:

www.holytrinitywindsor.org.uk

Holy Trinity Parish & Garrison, Claremont Rd & Trinity Pl

www.windsorparishchurch.org.uk

St John the Baptist, High St

www.allsaintswindsor.org.uk

All Saints, Frances Rd

www.ststephenwindsor.org.uk

Clewer St Stephen, Vansittart Rd

www.achurchnearyou.com/spital-st-agnes

St Agnes, St Leonard's Rd

Services for Sunday 29 January 2012

Candlemas

8.00am Holy Communion - Holy Trinity (Claremont Rd & Trinity Pl)

10.00am Family Communion - All Saints (Frances Rd)

10.00am Sung Eucharist - Clewer St Stephen (Vansittart Rd)

11.15am Morning Service - St John the Baptist (High St)

St John the Baptist Tower Appeal

A big thank you to all who voted on the RBWM website for the Royal Borough to allocate £2000 towards the Tower Appeal at the Parish Church of St John the Baptist. It was wonderful to receive a telephone call telling us that we had been successful, and to read on the BBC and RBWM websites that we were one of three winning projects based on votes received in July. Please pass on thanks to people who you know voted, but who are unlikely to have heard our good news.

Thanks to this substantial contribution and to many others, we have at the time of writing reached 65% of our £50,000 target, and it is planned to complete the fundraising and the works in the Spring, before the Jubilee and the Olympics.

Voting for funds to be released was one "painless" way to donate! In September, there is a further opportunity to contribute to the appeal without seeing your bank balance reduce. The Royal Borough has agreed for us to collect for the Tower outside the Post Office on several days in September - Sept. 7, 8, 14, 15, 23, 28, 29. If you are able to donate a little of your time in this way, please contact David Shaw to agree a convenient date and time. david.a.shaw25@btinternet.com.

Sowing Seeds

 
At Sunday Xtra in July we thought about the Parable of the Sower [Matt 13:1-9].  A team of volunteers acted out the story, enthusiastically sowing imaginary seeds then growing quickly but withering because the soil was shallow then getting choked by weeds and finally growing again, tall and strong when they had been sown in the good soil.

Many of us have allotments and we thought about how we normally sow seeds – very carefully in narrow rows or individual holes.  The farmer carefully sows seeds to the edge of his field but he does not throw them on the path or in the hedge.  This parable told us how generous God is in sharing his love with all of us, no matter how underserving we might be.

Sunday Xtra is a short informal service on the 2nd Sunday of each month in the Parish Hall at All Saints Church (Frances Road), 10am. On 14th August we will be “Talking with Jesus” and on 11^th September our theme is “The Golden Rule.”  Do come along.

More information about Sunday Xtra is available on the team ministry website or email SundayXtra@windsorchurches.org.uk to join our mailing list.  You can also find us on Facebook.

 

Sunday Xtra in All Saints Hall at 10am on 10 July

 
Have you found us on Facebook yet?  Please do visit our page – check out the news and photos.  Click on “like” and tell your friends ... http://on.fb.me/SundayXtra
 
If you have a smartphone, try installing a QR reader this week (free from your favourite App Store).
 
Sunday Xtra is a short, informal service of worship on the 2nd Sunday of every month.  Note these dates in your diary now: 10 July; 14 August; 11 September; 9 October; 13 November; 11 December.  Who could you bring with you?
 
Do you have a comment or question?  Want to get more involved?  Email the Sunday Xtra leadership team: SundayXtra@windsorchurches.org.uk

Hear what the Spirit says to the churches……

When did you last read John’s Gospel – the whole thing? It was, for me, a preparatory exercise in early June before spending five days at Gladstone’s Library in Flintshire in the company of thirty-six others, and Jack Spong: retired bishop of Newark, New Jersey, radical, liberal, a democrat, biblical scholar, just eighty and still enquiring, still learning, still searching after truth. He has been studying the fourth gospel for three years, and led us through, in a series of lectures, what he has come to understand, which may be published in 2014 “if I am still alive”.

Reading through John (RSV), it was as if I had never read it before. I was struck by his vilification of the Jews and their determination to have Jesus killed: “it is to your advantage that one man should die for the people” says Caiphas, “rather than that the whole nation should perish.” And I was challenged to try to make sense of the long discourses, purportedly given by Jesus. A very different read from the Synoptics, to say the least.

 “We will never understand the scriptures” says Spong, “unless we isolate the writer in context.” This gospel was written sixty or more years after Jesus’ death. The Romans had taken over Jerusalem. All the Jews had left were their sacred scriptures and their mystical tradition. The Jesus Jews tried to make sense of Jesus in a Jewish context. Orthodox Jews wanted to exclude from the synagogue revisionist Jews who wanted to include followers of Jesus.

Spong entitled his lectures “The Fourth Gospel – Tales of a Jewish Mystic”. In it Jesus is not baptised by John the Baptist who, rather, is a witness: “this is the Son of God”; the ‘miracles’ are signs that point to a different reality; the themes of the Gethsemane prayer are universal; the climax is the crucifixion; the second coming (“in a little while”) is the gift of the Holy Spirit. This gospel is different from the others: no genealogy, no birth story, no temptation in the wilderness, no transfiguration, no parables, no suffering in Gethsemane or on the cross – Jesus is in full control. There is no sense of the ‘fall’; the task of salvation is not moralistic – to be ‘saved from sin’ – but about what life can be, expanded to abundant life. ‘I am the Way’ is about the way to a new kind of humanity. “There’s something greater than feeling guilty” suggests Spong, “and that is being whole. If you become whole and expanded you may participate in being God.”

John – whoever the author was – develops his gospel around dramatically drawn figures, mostly unnamed, who don’t appear in the other gospels. They are symbols not history. Lazarus and the beloved disciple never existed; they are two sides of the same coin. The author is trying to put into words a transformative experience – a call into life. This gospel is full of symbols that the Jews would have understood. If we read it as literally true, we destroy it.

I’m writing this to give you a flavour of a refreshing and liberating experience. The thing about Spong is that he says things that one rarely hears in our everyday church circles. A few sound bites: 

• “Every living thing is survival oriented – it is the nature of life.”
• “Religion is a coping strategy – we want a God to do what we can’t do – to deal with the traumas of death.”
• “On the cross, Jesus went beyond the survival instinct.”
• “We become transformed when we love another more than we love ourselves.”
• “Jesus calls us to discover our freedom to give ourselves away in love”
• “No one comes to the Father but by me – taken literally leads to religious imperialism.”
• “Literalism is the dagger in the heart of the Christian faith – it renders the scriptures inaccurate.”
• “It’s difficult to study scripture critically when told: ‘This is the word of the Lord’.
• “The core of Christianity is not a doctrine but an experience.”
• “I don’t think God is a Christian”.
• “Jesus was all that he could be and we saw God in him.”

I hope that’s enough to interest some readers in Spong. He is both liberating and challenging. His books are readable: as good a place to start as any is “Why Christianity must change or die” (Harper Collins 1998).

 

Keep the Flag Flying at St John the Baptist

 
Your chance to vote to save the tower!
As part of the Royal Borough's Big Society 'Neighbourhood Budget' activity, all those who live, work or otherwise have an interest in Windsor & Maidenhead are eligible to vote for the council to spend money on their favourite projects. The Parish of St John the Baptist with All Saints have submitted Windsor Parish Church Tower Restoration as our favourite project, and all readers of the Team Magazine are urged to logon to www.rbwm.gov.uk to vote between July 4 and 31, AND ALSO TO ENCOURAGE ALL YOUR RELATIVES, FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES TO VOTE TOO! The submission can be found at www.rbwm.gov.uk.

St John the Baptist - Events June & July

 

Every Monday        1.00pm         Prayers for Healing and Peace

Every Wednesday   1.10pm         Lunchtime concerts until 22 June featuring students from the Royal Academy of Music. Lunches from (inclusive) 12.15pm. Entrance £5, Concessions £4.

22-24 June All day Denis Blandford Art exhibition and sale

23-24 June 11am-4pm Patronal Festival Refreshments

Saturday, 25 June 7.30pm Royal Free Singers concert, “On the lighter side”. Tickets £15 from 01753 662938 or at the door.

Sunday, 26 June 10.00am Patronal Festival Eucharist.

Sunday, 26, June 6.30pm Celebrate RSCM Music Sunday 2011 in “Voice and Verse”, a sequence of words and music for Choir and Congregation. Free with retiring collection.

Wednesday, 29 June  1.10pm John Clark-Maxwell, Organ (JS Bach, Brahms, Schumann, Dupré). Light lunches, 12.15pm. Entrance £5. Concessions £4.

Sunday, 3 July 3.00pm Hymns of Praise. Send your requests for  hymns to be included, plus optionally a sentence or two mentioning any personal significance this hymn or song has for you, to windsor.ministry1@gmail.com. Or talk to the Rev’d Margaret Bird. Free, with retiring collection.

Tuesday, 5 July 7.30pm Walk & Talk with Leslie Grout.  Guided tour of church and grounds, with a musical interlude, and Tower Appeal update. Tickets £5 at the door include a glass of wine.

Wednesday, 6 July 1.10pm Windsor Parish Church Players concert JS Bach Brandenburg concertos No.s 1 & 2, Albinoni Adagio, ‘Va tacito’ from Julius Caesar Handel, with Simon Ponsford (counter tenor) and Tim Carleston (trumpet), directed by Paul Hoskins. Light lunches 12.15pm. Entrance £10. Concessions £5.

Wednesday, 13 July 1.10pm Alexander Binns, Organ (JS Bach, Howells, Liszt). Light lunches, 12.15pm. Entrance £5. Concessions £4.

 

Parish Open Day at All Saints Church & Parish Hall—Saturday 11 June 10am to 3pm

 

Everyone is welcome to come and join us for what will be an interesting and entertaining day.  There will be something for everyone including:

 

• an Organ Recital (10:30 to 11am) by John Halsey, Director of Music;
• a recital by Karen Miles (soprano) accompanied by her husband     Damien (2:30 to 3pm);
• displays by regular church and hall users from across the community;
• displays of current church activities;
• come and view past parish registers of births, deaths and marriages;
• several children’s activities;
• Mothers’ Union cake stall;
• a lunchtime Bar Be Que (12 to 2pm);
• light refreshments throughout the day.

 

Car parking at Upton House School (limited) or King Edward VII Hospital.

 

Please call in and see what goes on.

 

Sunday Xtra - Walking with the Risen Jesus

If you were put on trial, accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict?

Sunday Xtra in May heard the story of two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus after Jesus’ death and resurrection [Luke 24:13-35]. The disciples met a stranger and they eventually realised that he was Jesus.  Why did they not recognise him immediately?

We thought about identity and how we recognise people we know.  Our activity was a game in which each group tried to identify famous people based on clues about their gender, nationality and other characteristics.

The penny dropped for the disciples when Jesus picked up bread and broke it for them.

We discussed what qualities others might see in us to recognise that we are Christians.  Would they know for sure?  The list of characteristics that we came up with is posted on our Facebook page.

Sunday Xtra on 12th June will be a celebration of Pentecost and on 10th July our theme will be the Parable of Two Sowers.  We hope you will be able to join us in the Parish Hall at All Saints Church, 10am.  Family and friends are always welcome, too.

More information on the team website or email SundayXtra@live.co.uk if you would like to join the Sunday Xtra mailing list.

The closing prayer used at the service:

 

    Risen Christ,

    You have no body on earth but ours,

    No hands but ours, no feet but ours.

    Ours are the eyes through which your compassion

    Must look out on the world.

    Ours are the feet by which you go about doing good.

    Ours are the hands with which you bless people now.

    Bless our minds and bodies,

    That we may be a blessing to others.

    Amen

 

(Adapted from a famous prayer of Teresa of Avila)