A Busy Saturday

Oct 2, 2022

We had a busy Saturday yesterday as we held our monthly coffee morning in aid of the Macmillan charity. We raised £142.37 on the day and £25.55 from our Parent & Toddler group on Friday, giving us a total of £167.92 to pass on to the charity.

Our thanks to all who baked and to those who served and tidied away – and of course to all who attended and gave so generously.

After the coffee morning, Roger and Garry continued to work,building an IKEA storage unit for the Parent & Toddler group, thanks to a grant from Coalfields Regeneration Trust.

 

Dearne Community Arts’ Festival (3)

Sep 27, 2022

The festival also saw 6 groups performing on stage, inclluding Matthew Tiffany (Greentop Circus), Angel Voices Performing Academy, Barnsley Youth Choir East Children’s Choir, the Snap Tin Strummers, Clayton School of Dance and the Elks (a singing group from Y8 at Astrea Academy Dearne).

There’s such a range of talent in our young people and in the area generally. Well done to all!

 

 

 

 

 

Dearne Community Arts’ Festival (2)

Sep 27, 2022

There were 19 exhibitors at this year’s Dearne Community Arts’ Festival, with a wide range of creativity on show from art to photography, knitted items to wax melts, creative writing to items for the home and much more. We are grateful to all these local residents whose talent is simply amazing.

Dearne Community Arts’ Festival 2022

Sep 27, 2022

As always, the Dearne Community Arts’ Festival, an annual event championing creativity and celebrating community, was a fantastic family day out on Saturday 24 September. Since its inception in 2017, the festival has gone from strength to strength, wtih exhibitions, workshops, demonstrations and performances on stage providing a place for local residents to showcase their creative talents and for people of all ages to come together and have a go at different art forms.

Vincent the Sun Bear (the mascot for the festival) and a balloon arch were the first signs of creativity at the festival;

Inside on the High Street, there were lots of different activities to watch or have a go at, including 3D printing, glass painting, face painting, mosaic postcards, paper engineering and hot wax painting. It’s great to be able to try something new and be creative.

Just Another Day?

Sep 25, 2022

This evening Dave spoke from Luke 12:13-21 with the title ‘Just Another Day.’ So many days seem ordinary to us but actually turn out to be significant. Noah, for example, was told to build a boat to prepare for rains and no one seemed to take any notice of what he said, but on just another day, the rains did indeed come. David was just an ordinary shepherd boy when he was anointed by Samuel; his life was ever changed by that encounter.
The rich man in this parable was probably looking forward to a prosperous and fulfilling life, but after his hard work in building a barn, God stepped in and tdeath called. We cannot afford to take any day for granted, but must understand that when God steps into our ‘ordinary’ days, we and those around us will be changed. God’s intervention in our ordinary days makes all the difference, but we must be prepared for the end of our lives at every point. The chasm between us and God has been bridged by Jesus, so we can be ready for His call at any point. We might think this is ‘just another day’, but God may well think differently.

Gardens

Sep 25, 2022

This morning we looked at the topic of ‘Gardens’, focussing on Hosea’s words in Hosea 10:12 about the need to sow for ourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love and break up our unploughed ground. Gardens feature heavily in the Bible, from the first garden in Eden (Gen 1-2) to the garden with the tree of life in Revelation 22. The very first job given to humanity was to take care of the garden, and the miracle of growth in gardens shows us God at work. The variety, colour and sheer beauty of the created world reminds us that God can be plainly seen through His creation, and we have a duty of care towards that creation.
Hosea uses analogies from the natural world to remind us that growth is also what God wants for us in the spiritual realm (see Eph 4:14-16). Gardening is a great example of the miraculous and the mundane going hand in hand and also of our partnership with God (we sow and plant, but God makes things grow, as Paul reminds us in 1 Cor 3.) There is much hard work and effort involved in gardening; we can’t afford to neglect a garden, or the weeds will take over.
Hosea urges us to ‘sow for yourselves righteousness’, but this is not our own righteousness (which Isaiah reminds us is as ‘filthy rags.‘) Rather, Christ has given us His own righteousness (see Rom 3:10-23) and ‘a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.’ (Eph 4:22-24). Christ’s life within us produces a different kind of life to that which we knew before.
The result of this is reaping the fruit of unfailing love – unfailing because God is the source and love never fails. (1 Cor 13:8) Reaping or harvesting is probably the most wonderful aspect of gardening, but still it involves hard work over a period determined for us by nature. Love has to be our priority and the outworking of our faith.
This will inevitably involve breaking up our unploughed land, digging deep into our hearts to examine our motives. The Ephesian church was known for its hard work, sound doctrine and perseverance, but Jesus still admonished them for having forsaken their first love. (Rev 2:4) Breaking up our unploughed land will mean putting to death everything that belongs to our old nature (Rom 6:11-14) and clothing ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. (Col 3:12-14) It will take effort and self-discipline, but the reward will be spiritual fruit. (Gal 5:22-23)