Christian Aid Week

The other main focus at the First Sunday Thing next Sunday (3 May) will be preparing for Christian Aid Week (which follows a week later on 10-16 May this year).

One of the activities available in the first part of the service will be to call in at a stall staffed by those who will be raising money in the parish that week. Some of them do the door to door collection - few people really enjoy doing this but they can provide tips about how to tackle it. Others take part in the annual sponsored walk across the Humber Bridge - and they raised £1500 last year because they got lots of those involved in the Walk Well health promotion scheme to join them.

Another of the activities available will be to call in at a stall where they will have publicity material about the theme for this year’s Christian Aid Week and will be using this to prepare some prayers for the service.

It will be good to have this important point of the year and of our Christian discipleship highly visible in our thinking and our worship.

Good Shepherd Sunday

We failed to put up our weekly message over Easter but we did make plans for the 3rd May at St Nicolas’ when we’ll be savouring lots of different aspects of Psalm 23 (‘The Lord’s my shepherd’) which may well be the best known passage in the Bible; it is the Sunday when the church reads about Christ as the Good Shepherd.

Our pattern established in January seems to be working well for all ages, and is intended to allow people to take part in things or not as they wish. Feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

There will be a quiet half hour prayerful Communion service at 9.30 for those who want to come to this instead of or as well as the First Sunday Thing. After this people will be setting up, giving others lifts and so on.

The First Sunday Thing will then begin at 10.30 with refreshments and the opportunity to get involved in activities going on in the different corners of the church for those who wish to do so. Among them will be art group, a drama group, a music group and a teaching group each of which already has ideas about how to explore the images of the Psalm.

After half and hour the different activities will be brought together for a short act of worship.

First go at St Nicolas'

There had been various forms of speculation about how the First Sunday Thing would go when it moved to St Nicolas' for the first time. In the event everybody fitted in, included the cat which slips into St Nicolas' from time to time and found the doors of the church standing wide open on a Spring day very welcoming. The 9.30 quiet Communion service was actually better attended than it had been at St Michael's. The 10.30 First Sunday Thing used not only the whole building but also the churchyard as people assembled and took part in the Palm Sunday procession in and out at the beginning and end of the service. The drama took place in the middle of the choir with people sitting all the way round (which meant they could feel part of it rather than seeing everything as spectators in front of a stage), and it would be interesting to have feed back on this way of sitting for the service.