November 2019

Harvest and Send a Cow!

Thank you to everyone who helped to make Harvest run so well in our churches.  Across Hope and Penyffordd, close to £1,000 has been raised for “Send a Cow” to support rural families in Rwanda with “milk and manure”!  Thank you to those who willingly tried the new contactless giving station in Hope Church, that we are currently trialling too!  We receive a statement that tells us what time the donation was given, so we are able to distinguish between which donations are given to Hope Church and which to Send a Cow or other designated good cause we may be giving to.
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In Memory of Your Loved One (3 Nov)

This month begins with our annual Quiet Service of Thanksgiving in Memory of a Loved One at 6pm on Sunday 3 November in Hope Church.  We are usually a congregation of around 100.

This is the service written especially for those of us, who would like to set aside time to remember loved ones no longer with us.  We give thanks for our loved ones’ lives and remember them by reading their names aloud.  We may feel like we are one our own when grieve but the truth is we are not – there is likely someone else experiencing the same pain or loss not all that far from us.  As a church we want to assure you that you are not on your own; and that we as your local church care for you.  Our prayer is that those who attend may know God’s peace, hope and strength in their lives.

Everyone is welcome to come along, whatever stage in the cycle of grief you may find yourself, and if you have a name of a loved one that you would like to be read aloud, please do get in touch with us.  In particular, we will include the names of all those whose funeral services we have taken in the past twelve months too.


Remembrance (10 Nov) & Advent Sunday (1 Dec)

The 100 year commemorations of the end of World War I now passed, Remembrance this year now turns to the 80th anniversary since the beginning of World War II.   You will find the various Remembrance services listed inside the church magazine and online.  I hear yet again our local communities will be finding new and creative ways to remember the fallen.

The Christmas Lights Switch On Service in Hope will be at 4pm Advent Sunday 1 December!  Arrive early for your seat!  See the Flyer inside the magazine or online for more details.


LyCiG-Local (4 Nov)

In Hope, we have now completed two of the six sessions of the Leading your Church into Growth (LyCiG) Local Course.  In Emmanuel, by the end of October, we will have touched on it in our church committee.  Not quite yet in post at St John’s (at the time of writing) I’m excited to learn how St John’s will take (or have already taken?) to LyCiG! It’s clear too that in Cymau and Llanfynydd – not least with your new Café Church getting established in the Ffrith Community Centre – that principals of LyCiG Local are being implemented and trialled right across this Southern quarter of the Borderlands Mission Area, that our Hope4All magazine is now increasingly serving.  I suppose this should be expected to happen when Cymau and Llanfynydd have our Mission Area’s “Mission Priest” as your local vicar!

The LyCiG-Local Course or “Leading your Church into Growth” Local Course is, as you can guess, all about hoping for, planning for, praying for and working toward ‘growth’ in our local churches – growth that is sustainable and healthy.  LyCiG suggests that we can work toward church growth in three ways – we can look to

1. Grow numerically – encourage more people to try church
2. Grow spiritually – through discipleship and Christian learning – helping more people to become like Jesus
3. Grow in service – look to bless those we know and meet during the week – increase our church’s capacity to serve God in the world and local community.

I wonder what do you think about these three areas of church growth?  How is your church or congregation growing?  What in our churches are we doing well?  What not so well?  How can we improve?  What can we be doing better?

Hope regulars – if you’d like to join us for our next LyCiG session in Hope – please come along to Hope Church Hall for 7pm on Monday 4th November. 

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In Christ, Adam.