Family Carol Service
The Family Carol service will take place on Sunday 17th December at 9.30 am in St. Matthew’s Church, Otterbourne. Everyone is welcome to join us.
Wishing you a very Happy Christmas from our three congregations.
Christingle
Services will be held in Compton and Otterbourne on Sunday 10th December. Take a look at the ‘Services’ page on the website for times. Please also note that the Christingle service will replace the 11 am Family Service at All Saints’, Compton.
Chistmas Tree Festival
The annual Christmas Tree Festival will be held in All Saints’ church on Saturday 9th December. Come along from 10 am for some tinsel, glitter and festive cheer.
Magazine Letter for December 2023
December 3rd is Advent Sunday. The season of Advent is all about waiting. But there is more than one sort of waiting – there is the kind of waiting when you know something’s going to happen and you know when it’s going to happen. Like Christmas, we all know when it is so we know how long we have to wait; and there are things that you wait for that you don’t know quite when they going to happen just that they will. Like catching the ball, you know that someone’s going to throw it to you, but you don’t know quite when so you have to stay ready, just in case – fielding in cricket is exactly like that. And we all know that life is like a game of cricket.
Magazine letter November 2023
I write this on 19th October, given the need for submission deadlines it has to be rather ahead of publication date. Usually such a lead time would be no difficulty, none of our three parish magazines is designed to convey national, let alone international news – and certainly not the Rector’s letter. Yet as the world stands at the moment I can’t help thinking that the context of all our thoughts is desperately subject to change in disturbing ways.
October 2023 Magazine letter
There is a parable that could have been written specially for a post-Covid church. It goes…
‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”‘
Magazine letter for September 2023
There are many opinions on prayer, but long gone is the idea that it matters what the proper physical attitude is. In fact, it is probably true that prayer is little thought of at all, even by those who do it! We who do pray tend not to think too much about the why or the how, we pray because we pray, for us to stop praying would be like removing a leg from a three-legged stool. Do we get answers to our prayers? It would be impossible to say empirically, but then it is not at all about getting answers.
Magazine letter for August 2023
This is the month of the great British get-a-way. The children have broken up and the family holidays begin. Whether it is to accompany a long flight, or for something to do by the poolside – many of us will take a novel to accompany our travels. I love stories, I can’t get enough of them – short stories, long stories, stories with a moral, stories without a moral, stories on the radio, stories on television, stories in a book. I don’t think I’m alone, human beings just respond to stories, made-up sequences of events, made-up characters, pure invention or supposed reality, it doesn’t really much matter, we just like stories.
Magazine letter July 2023
Despite being in midsummer there are many reasons to be feeling low. You only have to listen to the news to become depressed about the state of the world and the nature of mankind. Psalm 77, for example, makes that very clear, but also suggests a remedy. Read it for yourself, it’s not long – just type Psalm 77 into Google if you haven’t a Bible to hand.
Magazine letter June 2023
As I write, parts of northern Italy have been struggling under almost unprecedented levels of floodwater. We can recall the appalling floods in Pakistan last year, and in other places across the world in recent years.
Morning Service for Trinity 11 2023
The story of Joseph and his technicolour dream coat is one that still told and still known, largely thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber. Its a story which has everything, avarice, greed, jealousy, sibling rivalry, sex, politics, and power – no wonder it’s so popular – but in the end it’s a story of just what the presence of faith can do in a human life – to transform a curse into a blessing, tragedy into victory, despair into hope , and, finally , death into salvation.
Morning Service for Trinity 10 2023
You all know the story of Joseph so I won’t go into it now – I’ll save that for a later date – suffice it to say that what got Joseph into trouble was as much as anything his dreams – specifically dreams of pre-eminence over his brothers, you remember how he dreamed of the sun and the moon and 11 stars all bowing down to him. Of course, it didn’t help that he was his father’s favourite – but they could cope with that, they proved that by their later tolerance of Benjamin, it was Joseph’s dreams of lordship over them that was just too much. They even say ‘here comes the dreamer.” It was the dreams that caused the problem.
Morning Service for Trinity 9 2023
There is a story of a boy who, hearing of Albert Schweitzer and his work in Lambaréné hospital in Gabon used his pocket money to buy a bottle of aspirin and asked the US Airforce to drop it over his hospital. The story got out and four and half tons of medical supplies were eventually airlifted to Schweitzer’s hospital. He said, “I never thought that one child could do so much.” At the heart of the feeding of the 5,000 is one boy offering to share his lunch. A fact omitted by St Matthew – there’s no boy in his account.
Morning Service for Trinity 8 2023
More parables for us to ponder, parables we have known from our childhood, and heard countless sermons on, I am sure. Most of you will know my thoughts regarding the interpretation of the parables – how I believe their re-telling by the gospel and pseudo-gospel writers to have have been much influenced by the writers’ own situations and the audiences they were writing for. This is not revolutionary stuff – all academic biblical scholars would hold this position.
Morning Service for Trinity 7 2023
Is God real to you? Have you been introduced to him? That’s a daft question I know – you’re sitting in church aren’t you, how could you have avoided God? Well if you were listening to this morning’s reading form Genesis, from the saga of Jacob, it’s not such a daft question.
Otterbourne Christmas Market
Our annual Christmas Fair is being held on Saturday 25th November in Otterbourne Village Hall. Doors open at 12 noon. As well as a variety of stalls, we will be serving food and drinks. In the evening, we are holding a Quiz Night at 7.30pm with a fish and chip supper. If you are interested […]
Hursley Hub
Everyone is welcome to join us for a hot drink, breakfast rolls and home-made cake in th church room at All Saints’, Hursley on Saturday 18th November. Come along between 9.30 am – 12.30 pm for friendly chat.
An Evening with The Gents of St. John’s
The Gents of St John’s are a close-harmony group made up of the world-renowned choral scholars from St John’s College, Cambridge. Join them on Saturday 23rd September 2023 for an evening of music spanning over 600 years in All Saints Church, Hursley. The concert starts at 7.30pm and there will be a fifteen minute interval. […]
Monthly Coffee Mornings
Coffee mornings are usually held on the first Monday of the month at 10am in St. Matthew’s, Otterbourne church room. Tea, coffee, cake and biscuits will be on offer with donations benefiting a local charity.Drop in for as little or as long as you can.