Epiphany, 3 January 2021

2nd January 2021 Christ Church, Community, Diocese, Parish News, St Andrew's, Turton Moorland Team

Love and blessings to you

May all kings bow down before him;
all the nations do him service

Psalms 72:11

Dear friends,

As we welcome in a NEW YEAR – may it bring joy, peace and renewed hope for the future.

Loving God, we bring to mind our Church, both in this place and throughout the world.

We pray for courage, strength and discernment in all our decisions, that our lives may be living signs of Your love in action.

Please know that you continue to be in our thoughts and prayers. We wish you Happy, HEALTHY and HOPEFUL New Year.

Stay safe and keep well.
Love and blessings,

Reverend Carol Hayden,
Iain Stewart – Church Warden,
Angie Foster – Assistant Church Warden
Dawn Hitchen – Church Warden & Authorised Lay Minister for Pastoral Care

Public worship is paused

Until further notice, all publich worship will be paused. Please read this update from Canon Peter Reiss.

Christmas Carols

Thank you to all who attended the joyful carol sing-along outside Christ Church Walmsley on the afternoon of SUNDAY 20 DECEMBER. (Photos included in the Newsletter.)

Thank you also to Kath R & Frank M for providing the mince pies and chocolates.

Online Services

The wonderful weekly online service, led by our Team Rector, Peter Reiss can be found HERE

Virtual Evening Prayer

From our own Walmsley Parish, we share with you another ‘VIRTUAL EVENING PRAYER’, recorded in church and led this week by Adrian Golland. Jane Dent reads from Isaiah and the New Testament reading from Romans is given by John Evans (ALM for Worship). Those of you who usually attend Evensong at Christ Church Walmsley may wish to wait until 6.30pm for an element of ‘normality’, but this link is available to watch NOW.

Worship at home

New and exciting ‘Worship at Home’ resources for adults and children are created each week by the worship Team at St. Maxentius. Available from the Team Website.

Online shopping

A reminder for you if you place orders through Amazon, as a registered charity, Walmsley Parish PCC has a link with Amazon Smile, which allows supporters to click this code: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/ch/1165756-0 to make Amazon purchases as normal, but 0.5% of the sale will go – at no cost to yourself – to Walmsley Parish (The Parochial Church Council Of The Ecclesiastical Parish Of Christ Church, Walmsley With St Andrews, Bromley Cross.)

Please help if you can when you shop at smile.amazon.co.uk

NEWS from Walmsley Parish Community Hall

Please visit our Hall’s Facebook Page

Walmsley Parish Community Hall Manager

We’ve hired! We were looking for an enthusiastic, community-minded person to take on the newly created role of ‘Hall Manager’ for Walmsley Parish Community Hall …and we found that person J. Gemma Gardiner has been appointed as the new Hall Manager with effect from the New Year. Congratulations, Gemma, on your appointment to this role and we wish you well. For Hall Booking enquiries e-mail parish-hall@walmlseyparish.org

Walmsley School Admissions 2021

Please see this update from the Chair of Governors.

Urban Outreach – Grub Tub

Please do continue to remember those who rely on food donations. As a church we have supported Urban Outreach in a number of ways, including donating to the Grub Tubs in each church.

When churches are closed, you can place your food donations in the GRUB TUBs in our local supermarkets. URBAN OUTREACH rely on the generosity of food donors to provide food parcels to those in need across the borough. Thank you to those who have given recently.

Other links of interest…

Despite the gloomy news of restrictions and tiers, we hope you were able to celebrate a joyful Christmas. If you didn’t catch the special online CAROL SERVICE from the Turton Moorland Team, with readers & a (‘Covid’) choir from all four parishes, hand-bells from St Peter’s, and wonderful images from across our local area, including lots of Christmas decorations and lights, the link is below. For those who did watch it, we hope it brought joy, hope and peace to those who couldn’t get to church, and to our communities.

Have you watched the Manchester Diocese Service of 9 Lessons & Carols? Our ‘Covid’ Choir featured again with the beautiful backdrop of angels at Christ Church Walmsley. Thank you to the singers from across the Turton Team who gave their time to record the carols at Walmsley Parish Community Hall in two sessions with socially distanced microphones, greatly helped by the excellent skill of professional sound engineer, Lea Royse J! Thank you also to our organists Dave Smith & Danny Robins. We appear at about 46 mins in, just after Mark Ashcroft, Bishop of Bolton gives his Christmas address.

If you were not able to come to us in person to celebrate Christmas, there was an excellent online Christmas Day Service from the Turton Moorland Team Ministry. And the Sunday 27 December Service, featuring the amazing tableaux set around the grounds of St. Peter’s Church, Belmont, can also be viewed using this usual link for the weekly online service.

You may have seen the ‘taster’ of the St. Andrew’s Sunday School VIRTUAL NATIVITY in the Christmas Day online service from the Turton Moorland Team. Here it is in its entirety. Thank you to all the children who told the Christmas story so movingly. And thank you to Katie for organising it.

Kathryn Smethurst – a member of the Hallé Choir – has shared ‘The Hallé’s Virtual Christmas Concert’.

If you would to receive the weekly Parish Newsletter via email, please contact Dawn Hitchen dawn@walmsleyparish.org