Monday 27 April 2015

Churches Together Forum and 2015 AGM

The CTiF AGM and Forum meeting will take place on 13th May.   Agendas and previous Minutes are on the CTiF Website.   The meeting will have several reports presented and they are reproduced below.

 
 Academy Chaplaincy Update from Boost 
 
In September 2014 we launched a new chaplaincy partnership with Felixstowe Academy. Thank you for your support. This project has opened up many opportunities and is gaining recognition at a regional and national level, and remains the first partnership of its kind in Britain.
Josh has been involved in a number of new events at the academy as well as offering pastoral support and contributing to assemblies and lessons on a regular basis. Feedback from staff and students has been overwhelmingly positive, as seen at Josh’s commissioning service at the academy with Bishop David before Easter.
Finance remains a challenge for us. The academy are unable to contribute to the funding of this role and although we have seen support grow recently we still need more regular giving to make sure this project is sustainable long term.
With the potential of interacting with 1,300 students on a daily basis, Academy Chaplaincy is not only good value, but also is leading the way in creative partnerships between churches and schools, and rediscovering what modern youth work and ministry looks like.
Thank you for your continued interest and please do support us if you are able.


Walton Parish Nursing
We had a particularly successful information morning during Unity Week.
Marilyn Flower stepped down as our Parish Nurse OT at the end of April as she prepares to relocate to Bournemouth. So we are recruiting for another Parish Nurse, preferably with community psychiatric nursing experience, to join Lorna & the team (deadline for applications is May 22nd).
Our wonderful team of volunteers has grown to 19 which includes some from churches outside Walton.
There is a new drop-in health clinic at The Laydens Project, Langley Avenue, which is proving popular.
Two volunteers are to train as leaders for chair-based exercise classes with a vision to start a second class in the near future.
We have a dedicated Management Team & a set of Trustees that includes the three Ministers of the Walton churches in this ecumenical partnership.
Look at our new website www.waltonpn.org.uk
We have valued the support from other churches & wish to acknowledge kind donations received over the year.


Felixstowe Listening Service (FLS)
Now well into our fourth year, we continue to provide short-term listening as well as professional counselling for adults who are experiencing life difficulties. With a team of 10 trained volunteer listeners and counsellors, we are now running up to 16 individual sessions a week on Wednesdays and Thursdays, both at the Library and at Hope Trust and aim to see prospective clients for an initial interview within two to three weeks. We are committed to offering listening as a free service (although we do actively encourage donations) and low-cost counselling related to people’s ability to pay. With the majority of the people who use the service being on low incomes and our need to develop the service further, we are experiencing financial pressures and are constantly looking at ways of increasing our income without in any way compromising our Christian ethos. Our longer-term aim is to have our own premises, possibly shared with another Christian group. We greatly value our relationship with the local churches and welcome opportunities to speak to church congregations and groups to explain how our service works in partnership with local church ministry. For more information on FLS, please contact Margaret Bale on 07896 326459 or e-mail felixstowelisten@gmail.com.


Felixstowe Town Pastors


Thanks for your prayers, love and support for the work of Felixstowe Town Pastors. On the 10th of April 2010 Felixstowe Town Pastors stepped onto the streets for the first time to serve in the night time economy, defusing and de-escalating difficult situations, listening, caring and serving – so yes, that means we are now 5 years old!

 Our statistics for 2014 regarding the 1864 incidents handled give one picture of what we’ve handled, but our experience and one to one engagement have many hidden stories about loving, caring, bringing peace, building bridges, serving, mopping up mess, sweeping up broken glass, dried tears, laughing, hugs, high fives and answered prayer.
Last year we said goodbye to Philippa Kichenside as Coordinator (but still a Town Pastor), and this year we’ve welcomed Jan Bedford who joined us to look after the day to day running of TP’s in Felixstowe. Our greatest ongoing need – more volunteers! Especially base pray-ers, and also female town pastors. If interested in finding out more, please see Jan Bedford or Liz at the CTF AGM, or email coordinator@felixstowetownpastors.org.uk
Every Blessing!
Peter Livey – Director, FTP                                      

Sunday 26 April 2015

May and June Specials

Mark is on sabbatical in May and June.  We've got a special programme on Sundays.  Do come along to praise God and see what He has to say to us through these speakers on Sunday mornings.

10th May  Rev Peter Croft

17th May  Julia Pascoe,  Jews for Jesus, followed by a shared lunch and an informal time with Julia to learn more about what God is doing amongst Jewish people.

24th May  Dr Andrew Marfleet

31st May  Rev Ivan Barley

07th June  Dr Andrew Marfleet

14th June  Exchange Sunday

21st June  Fathers' Day All-Age Service with Paul Taylor

28th June  Rev David Thompson

On Sunday evenings, our programme will be slightly different than usual and the programme is below.



03/05/2015 Prayer Margaret & Sandra
10/05/2015 No Service No Service
17/05/2015 No Service No Service
24/05/2015 Communion Andrew Marfleet
31/05/2015 No Service No Service
07/06/2015 Prayer Margaret & Sandra
14/06/2015 Exchange Sunday Exchange Preacher
21/06/2015 Communion Andrew Marfleet
28/06/2015 No Service No Service
05/07/2015 Picnic & Praise @ Christchurch Park, Ipswich
12/07/2015 EBA Sector Meeting
or Praise on the Prom
@ Garland Street
@ The Prom near The Hut



Sunday 12 April 2015

Walton Parish Nursing in Co-op's Community Token Scheme











Great News.  Walton Parish Nursing has been accepted for the East Of England Co-op's Community Token Scheme for the next three months. 

If you have a Co-op Member's card, you will be given a token when you shop and you will be able to select one of three local charities to allocate the token to - PN is one of these.

At the end of three months, £1000 will be shared out between the three charities in proportion to the number of tokens that have been collected for each of them.    The scheme is in operation in Solar at the moment, but please keep an eye out for a collecting box in other local EoE Co-ops too.

Details of the scheme are here.    If you don't know much about Walton Parish Nursing then look here.

Wednesday 8 April 2015

PowerPoint Training Course


MRBC's first PowerPoint training course was held in two sessions.

For those who couldn't make it, or for people to go back over it, the two PowerPoints for the sessions are below;  both in PDF and PPT formats. 

PDF Files  Session 1  Session 2
PowerPoint Files  Session 1  Session 2

What we covered

Basic functions of PowerPoint
How to put presentations together
Formatting slides
Inserting text, formatting text
Inserting pictures, right choice of size, resizing.
Inserting media - basic principles
Using PowerPoint at MRBC including use of Dropbox



Not got PowerPoint?

If you don't want to shell out the cash for PowerPoint, LIbreOffice is a great alternative.  It does just about everything PowerPoint does and it's free. www.libreoffice.org.  

If you only have a tablet, you can still produce presentations if you have a Google account as Google Drive/Quickoffice can make basic presentations. Go to Google for details.





Monday 6 April 2015

Jesus is Risen!

That's what we celebrated on Easter Sunday and here are a couple of  pictures.





Friday 3 April 2015

The Burial of Jesus


Our opener for Easter Sunday.  Music is the opening sequence of Funeral for a Friend by Elton John.   Video sequence is from the Jesus film.


Good Friday: Live!

I saw this new video online recently from Christians in Sport.   Great reminder about the events of Good Friday in the BBC live update style.