The Benefice of St. Bartholomew

Benefice News - 30th July 2021

Details

Written by Tony Gowers

Church News

A copy of this week’s Church News can be found here. In addition to news, the document gives full details of all of our services this coming Sunday and on the following Sunday. Do join in with everything that appeals to you.

Sunday 1st August 2021 - Ninth Sunday after Trinity

On Sunday 1st August, we have two services:

• The monthly Pilgrim Service at 9.45 am in St Mary's Church, East Knoyle, a service based on the Iona style of worship.
• A special Lammas Eucharist at 11.00 am in the Barn at Moors Farm, East Knoyle. More details on this service can be found in the article below, or here.

If you are not able to attend church in person and wish to join an online Eucharist, Salisbury Cathedral is live streaming the 11.00 am service at this link: https://www.salisburycathedral.org.uk/live

Mid-Week Eucharist (Said)

The Rev’d June is leading a mid-week service of Common Worship Eucharist (said) on Zoom each Wednesday at 9.30 am. Please do consider participating in this service if you are able. You can find the Zoom details in the right-hand margin of this webpage.

Please note: this service will not be held during August 2021.

Churches Opening During the Week

Some of our church buildings will be open at specified times throughout the coming week. Details of the opening days and times for each church are shown below:

• St Andrew’s Church, Donhead St Andrew: Tuesday and Friday: 10.00 am to 4.00 pm
• St Mary's Church, East Knoyle: Monday to Saturday: 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
• St Leonard’s Church, Semley: Monday to Saturday: 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
• St Mary's Church, Donhead St Mary: Monday to Saturday: 10.00 am to 6.00 pm

These details may change as we gain experience of our ‘new normal’, so please check this page from week to week for the latest information.

Zoom

With many services now being held in our churches on Sundays and some being ‘Zoomed’ at the same time, we require more than one ‘Zoom room' to enable us to Zoom two services from different churches simultaneously. Details of each ‘Zoom room' are shown below.

Important: please ensure that you check in the right hand margin of the this page the Zoom details of the service in which you wish to participate before joining the service.

Zoom 2

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84985924593?pwd=em4zQ1Q2YkdrdTRuanhYY0lOejZQUT09
Meeting ID: 849 8592 4593      Passcode: 519527

Zoom 3

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85640073075?pwd=akd0WTVKUHpSeDFhZ1NrM1NrTHZKQT09
Meeting ID: 856 4007 3075    Passcode: 2020

Zoom 4

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2872955220?pwd=NTN5OHE0anVTRmNwYmpUVHdoSWI3QT09
Meeting ID: 287 295 5220      Passcode: 175430

Zoom 5

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3341879558
Meeting ID: 334 187 9558       Passcode: 345123

You can also participate by dialling in by telephone to one of these phone numbers: 0203 481 5237 or 0203 481 5240.

Click here for more guidance on how to join a Zoom meeting.

Lammas Service, East Knoyle - 1st August 2021

Details

Written by Tony Gowers

The Benefice will be holding a special Eucharist service on Sunday 1st August 2021 to celebrate Lammas, the beginning of the harvest. Details of the service are as follows:

• Where: The Barn at Moors Farm, East Knoyle, Shaftesbury, SP3 6BU (by kind permission of the Reading family)
• When: 11.00 am on Sunday 1st August 2021

Click here to see a map showing the location of Moors Farm.

Please do come and join us to thank God for our daily bread - all are most welcome.

St. John’s Church, Charlton - St John’s Patronal Family Communion - Bishop Nicholas’ Visit - 20th June 2021

Details

Written by The Rev'd June Lane

(written on Sunday 20th June 2021)

Tomorrow is mid-summer day, the Summer Solstice, but today was wet, cold and windy!  Despite the weather nothing could dampen our spirits at St. John's Church, Charlton, where the atmosphere was one of joy and positivity as Bishop Nicholas (the Bishop of Salisbury) joined us to lead our worship.

As everyone arrived we were greeted with the offer of refreshments, served at the Church door and consumed outside; the children especially loved the chocolate bars and fruit juice! People, all suitably masked, chatted freely, many thrilled to be in church for the first time in months, whilst online we were joined by those who still needed to Zoom in to be part of our worship.

The Bishop’s theme reminded us of the message of St John the Baptist, “Repent!” He reminded us that John’s message was not always comfortable, not always welcome, but always the right message, the reminder that we all need to turn and see God, to turn and follow His Ways. Bishop Nicholas pointed out how much both the Church and the world had had to adapt over the past eighteen months, and emphasised that many of these changes would be with us, probably for ever. We have all learnt a great deal in this time, and we need to make sure that good lessons are retained.

He assured us that he could feel the determination to make things work at St John’s and praised the efforts of the wardens and worship leaders over this time.

Our worship was enlivened by a superb choice of hymns, safely delivered online of course, from a variety of sources, and, in his final farewell, he thanked us that in our choice of the last hymn, 'Hark! a thrilling voice is sounding', he had been taken back to the very beginning of his ministry, such a wonderful way to travel full circle and end a joyful, albeit sad, occasion.

June Lane

Editor’s note: larger versions of the photographs in this article can be found on the Benefice Facebook page here.

From the Associate Priest - July 2021

Details

Written by The Rev'd June Lane

Dear Friends,

Right now, many of us are feeling really miserable that we can travel so little from our own immediate environment, regretting lost holidays and outings. Of course, just a few short weeks ago many more of us were miserable because we could not safely leave our own homes!! It is all a matter of scale isn’t it. The Olympics is one focus of much of this as the fate of the 2020/21 Games is discussed and debated; it makes us all look back with longing at easier times when we felt we could plan travel and events with a degree of certainty.

As part of my thinking on this, I came across an old story about one of our Olympic class yachtsmen, John Ballenden, when he was involved in one of those ‘round the world’ type events. On this occasion, he was well in the lead and approaching safe harbour in Rio de Janeiro, the prize within his grasp. At that moment, one of those strange weather changes occurred, and he became totally becalmed. Not a breath of wind from any direction. Looking towards shore, he saw the point with the huge statue of Christ the Redeemer, arms outstretched in welcome. As he looked at the statue, he was heard to yell, “For God’s sake, don’t just stand there! Do something!”

We have all watched our televisions screens with the Prime Minister and the scientists giving their briefings and I am sure many of us have been heard to shout, “Don’t just stand there spouting forth about the difficulties and restrictions - do something!” Unlike the statue, the P.M. and others are doing something, not always what we want by any means, but we need to play our part and do a lot ourselves.

This time of pandemic has taught us all that we need to pull together, not only governments and their citizens, but the whole of humankind needs to work with Almighty God to help to rebalance things. This pandemic has taught us just how easy it would be to destroy this wonderful planet, this fantastic creation of our God.

Unlike that statue in Rio which is made of marble, and is a representation of man’s vision of Christ, God is real and has shown us ways to make things better, to rebalance our world. If we all just studied, not the statue, but the real, living Jesus, if we all just tried every day to live our lives by His teaching, then we should conquer our problems, we shall ‘get our lives back.’ Not necessarily the lives we think we want, but the lives which will work for the good of all.

The 24th is John the Baptist’s day and John’s message was "Repent! Repent!" He did not mean just say sorry for what was wrong, Repentance means "TURNING ROUND", turning our lives around to truly try to follow Jesus’ ways.

God Bless you all,

June

Prayer Cycle and Prayer of the Month - July 2021

Details

Written by The Rev'd June Lane

Please do continue to make your requests for prayer known to us. Prayer changes things. Contact any of us: Rev’d June (tel: 01747 828427), Julia (tel: 01747 829166), or Theresa (tel: 01747 829188). There are many of us in need of that extra help and comfort that comes from knowing someone is praying for us.

Prayer of the Month

This Prayer is from “The Prayer Tree” by Michael Leunig:

God bless our contradiction, those
parts of us which seem out of character.
Let us be boldly and gladly out of character.
Let us be creatures of paradox
and variety: creatures of contrast; of light and shade: creatures of faith,
May God be our constant.
Let us step out of character into the unknown, to struggle
and love and do what we will. Amen.