17th April 2022
By Kevin Montgomery in Sunday Service on 17 April 2022
He is Risen indeed. Alleluia!
I do warmly encourage you all to come along to one, or both, of our Easter Celebrations tomorrow morning. It is three years since we were able to gather in church on Easter Day and fully celebrate Christ’s resurrection, so let us do it in style tomorrow.
We will certainly be starting our celebrations early with the SUNRISE SERVICE at St Leonard’s Rockingham at 5.30am. This service is a very moving way to start Easter celebrations, quite literally moving, because we start outside the church around a fire before moving inside and slowly moving towards Communion. The church can be accessed via the entrance to Rockingham Castle off the A6003. Drive up to the post with the intercom and the gates will open. Drive to the Castle Towers and you will see cars parked just off the road on the right going away from the Towers. You then have to walk down to the church. After the service there will be breakfast in Rockingham Village Hall.
At St Columba’s we have a more leisurely start time of 10.30am for our ALL AGE EASTER CELEBRATION WITH COMMUNION, although we are asking children and young people to arrive by 10am for a run through of our Easter drama. The weather looks as if it will be fine so we will finish the service outside church singing “Thine be the glory”, as we did last year but then we were socially distanced, tomorrow we can gather together to sing out God’s praise! This service includes some aspects, like the drama, that could not be filmed in advance, so we don’t have a pre-recorded version of the service this week, but you will be able to watch a livestream tomorrow morning at 10.30 (or you can watch back later in the day)
There will be no HIA Prayer Meeting tomorrow evening because many of us will be packing for Spring Harvest (and wanting an early night after getting up for the Sunrise service!) On the subject of SPRING HARVEST don’t forget that you can watch at home (you may even be able to spot people from St Columba’s) by buying an online access ticket for £49 from: https://www.springharvest.org/events/news/spring-harvest-home-is-back-for-22
I am grateful to those who prepared Holy Week Reflections, and those who came along and joined in – we had quite a variety. Just before Easter you may like to make use of a final reflection prepared by David Bavin. This is a Passover Reflection for the evening of Easter Eve (today) and is basically three characters involved in the trial of Jesus looking back over the events from their point of view. It can be viewed in full or broken down into each character’s section and used for meditation. The reflections stop at the end of Passover before Easter dawns. You can watch via this link: https://youtu.be/Xp_cwzseHEU
Next Sunday, 24th April, there is a service of Holy Communion at St Leonard’s, Rockingham at 9am and of Morning Worship at St Columba’s at 10.30am. We will also be meeting again for our HIA Prayer Meeting at 6pm on Sunday 24th.
Here is an Easter Special mini SCANS from Steve, and at the back of church there is a Prayer Letter from our new CMS mission partners, working in North Africa. They will be visiting St Columba’s in the summer, so do have a read and get to know them and their situation. Due to sensitivities in the area where they are working we are not able to include this as an attachment, but if you would like a printed copy for your personal use do ask Ian.
Although Kevin and I will be at Spring Harvest this coming week we will have our mobiles with us (see below) so do call if you need us and we can contact people in Corby if necessary.
A very happy Easter to you all,
Ian
Ian – 07903 644609
Kevin – 07512 822422