Deanery Synod Ideas fayre
The Fayre will be held on Saturday 13th April from 2-4pm at St.Paul’s Church, Winchester, SO22 5AB. The aim of the Fayre is to give people inspiration for what can be done in our own parishes, and to link with others to exchange ideas and use local expertise. Anyone who is interested is invited to […]
CHO Tots
W are excited to announce that we will be holding a new benefice baby and toddler group, starting on Wednedsday 17th April in St. Matthew’s Church Room. The group welcomes all parents, grandparents or carers with babies and toddlers. It is a chance for your children to play and learn to socialise whilst you have […]
Magazine letter March 2024
We are a good way into Lent by now, our 40 days of fasting, or what passes for fasting these days, usually the giving up of some self-destructive habit, like sugar in your tea or chocolate biscuits. All very useful but hardly a wilderness experience! I suppose we’ve lost our sense of urgency in the conduct of our spiritual lives, we don’t generally tend to think in terms of ‘doing battle with our lower natures.’ Such language belongs to an age of hand to hand combat.
Magazine letter February 2024
In our increasingly secular world any kind of ‘organised religion’ is regarded as something strange and peculiar. People instead claim to be ‘spiritual’. Which rather sounds to me like claiming to be able to swim without getting wet! Religion is the embodiment of spirituality, it is what gives it shape and purpose, and allows the experience of generations to be shared and learned from.
MORNING Service for Mothering Sunday 2024
Today is Mothering Sunday, please note, it is not Mother’s Day, that is a day for people to celebrate their mother, it began in America after a one woman campaign by a lady called Anna Jarvis. It was declared a holiday by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, it is always the 2nd Sunday of May. Anna Wilson was so disgusted at the commercialisation of her idea that she regretted starting the whole thing.
Morning Service for Lent 3 2024
The Ten Commandments are a sobering read – they become the terms of God’s third covenant with Israel. The first to Noah, the second to Abraham and now this third to the freed Hebrew slaves in the wilderness. According to the writer of the book of Exodus these Ten Commandments were given by the voice of God himself from the holy mountain of Sinai, in fear and trembling the people heard them.
Morning Service for Lent 2 2024
Today’s first two readings are about having faith and, indeed, justification by faith – being put right with God by faith– is a key Protestant belief and was crucial for Martin Luther. This was contrasted with doing good as a sort of scoring system; I will be put right with God by doing more and more good deeds or in Luther’s time giving more and more money to the Roman Church for the re-building of St Peter’s, Rome.
Morning Service for the first Sunday in Lent 2024
The name Satan comes from the Greek, Satanas, which is in turn a transliteration of the Aramaic, satana. The character first appears in Jewish literature in the book of Job, where he is simply hassatan, the accuser, one of the servants of God. In later literature he developed into an evil power, the opponent of God, seeking to destroy the relationship between God and man. It is difficult not to ascribe this development to the influence of the dualistic religions of Israel’s near neighbours, such as the Zoroastrians in Persia.
Lent Study Group
Don’t forget the Lent Discussion Group meeting in the Church Room of St Matthew’s, Otterbourne on Thursdays in Lent at 10am.
Trinity’s Big Sleep Out 2024
This year the Big Sleeep Out will take place on Friday 24th May. Spend the night under the stars in the grounds of Winchester College, sleeping out in homemade cardboard shelters, while raising money and awareness for those facing homelessness. For more information, please visit: https://trinitywinchester.org.uk/bigsleepout/
A Morning Service for the Sunday next before Lent 2024
Today as we draw close to the season of Lent and our journey in imagination to Jesus’ cross and resurrection, so the lectionary bids us to remember the moment when Jesus’ actual journey to the cross begins in earnest, that moment when at the northern borders of ancient Israel he turns to begin his return south to Jerusalem in time for Passover and the celebration of the liberation of his people from slavery.
Morning Service for Epiphany 4 2024
So here we have a gospel passage we can all relate to. It’s all about Jesus going to church, or at least the Jewish equivalent.
Morning Service for Epiphany 3 2024
We use symbols to show things that we may not say; do the Christmas presents we have received and given recently say something – as a child I used to receive knitted woollen light grey socks each Christmas from my aunt who was well off – but did the socks say I like you, my only nephew, so much that I will spend hours knitting for you? For some people, who could not see beyond the physical, they would only be socks.
Morning Service for Epiphany 2 2024
Today is about introductions, it’s also about change and revolution. Samuel is introduced to God, or I suppose I should use the name that is written in the Hebrew, YHWH (generally given as Yahweh), because that was what the writer used – not some generic term ‘god’, but Yahweh, the sacred, special, and very personal name given to Moses when he asked the voice at the burning bush who he should say had spoken to him. In fact the incidents aren’t all that different so far as Samuel didn’t recognise the voice that called him any more than Moses did.
Morning Service for Epiphany 2024
That remarkable piece from Isaiah is worth pausing to notice. It is easily overlooked on a day so full of obvious sermons about Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, Wise Men, Stars and the like. They are stirring words of hope to a people reluctant to hope – a people whose hope has been squeezed from them by poverty, by homelessness – by being strangers on a foreign land.
Morning Service for Christmas 1 2023
There will be some men and women here who like me are labelled colour blind. (It really is a misnomer -more like atypical colour vision) Many, many years ago, I said to a colleague, who asked where someone was, he is over there by the green curtains which covered the whole length and height of the large hall – only they were not green but red – making for some confusion.
Jigsaw Festival
St. Matthew’s Church, Otterbourne will be holding a Jigsaw Festival on Saturday 10th February between 1 pm and 4 pm. People have been busy completing puzzles to make sure all the pieces are present. These puzzles will be on display and available for you to purchase to make again at home. Why not come to […]
Morning Service for Christmas 2023
Religion is the communication of an experience; call it a feeling, call it an expression of something that can’t be defined or explained. Because we are human beings we try hard to shape the experience, the feeling, with our minds. We can say what it isn’t, we can guess at what it might be, but like many really important things, in the end, you just have to stay with the feeling. Today is about that feeling.
January Magazine Letter
This poem by Al Zolynas seems appropriate when there is so much to cause us concern this new year, from the ever present threat of global warming to the dreadful wars in both Israel and Ukraine, not to mention the endless conflict in Iraq and Yemen.
Benefice Service , Sunday 31st December
Please note that the service on Sunday will now be held at All Saints’, Compton at 11 am. The Service will take the form of a Shorter Communion. Please inform anyone who may be intending to join the Service this week of this unforeseen change.