North Tamar Churches

From the Parish Priest

Dear friends,

This year, because of the date of Easter, May is a month full of celebrations!

There have been some wonderful celebrations in our churches recently. Our commemorations of our Lord’s Passion Death and resurrection were appropriately solemn and joyful, and our gathering at Broadwoodwidger for our confirmation service was indeed a very special occasion. Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to our church life and worship for these occasions.

The celebrations continue, with Ascension Day on the 9th May. This is a Principal Feast: as important as Christmas and Easter, but often forgotten about. Do please come and join us as we celebrate the triumph of Christ ascending into Heaven. This is one of those occasions when we are taking Church out of the building, this time to the lovely Barn at Orchard Barton. Where we will celebrate both with worship and with food and Fun!

The feast of Pentecost follows on the 19th, and this year coincides with one of our Baring-Gould Celebrations at Lewtrenchard: celebrating his marriage and family life. This should be a lovely celebration, and everyone is welcome.

Finally, on the 26th there is the Feast of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity! The day to contemplate the very nature of God.

We celebrate the love of God in the context of a world that seems to have forgotten what love is. The news from the Holy Land, Ukraine, and many other places is both deeply saddening and frightening. But we are taught that there is no situation, and no person, or group of people, that are beyond the reach of God’s love.

As we celebrate the truths of our faith, we should not rest in prayer and action to work for the Love of God in heaven to be demonstrated by his people on earth.

With love and prayers,

Philip

From the Parish Priest

Dear friends,

Easter is early this year!! When Easter Sunday is in March it coincides with Clock Change Sunday, so be aware if you want to turn up on time!!!!! The run up to Easter is the most special time of the year for Christians. It is the time when we retell the wonderful story of God’s saving love in Jesus Christ and are invited and encouraged to take time out of our, sometimes frantic, lives to contemplate the sacrifice that Jesus made for us all.

The timetable for services this Holy Week is published separately in this volume, and as always, I encourage you to come and join in our commemorations and celebrations of this great season and festival.

As I write this our churches are planning their Annual Meetings. These are important occasions, as they reflect on the activity and vibrancy of our worshipping communities. The Church, as I have said and written often, is not a building but a community of people, and without that worshipping ommunity our church’s are just shells. If you would like to help build up the real church, that is the community of people, and could support us in our mission and ministry, then you are most welcome to come to our Annual Meetings and join in!

Meetings, however mundane are still about the Joy of the resurrection, and the new life that God gives us in and through Jesus Christ! May that Easter Joy fill all our lives.

With love and prayers,
Philip

From the Parish Priest

Dear friends,

New year is always exciting, but it does not take long for normality to return and we are back in our usual routine. However, the year proceeds, and before we know it the days are getting longer, and signs of Spring are already appearing.

In the Christian Church, Lent will soon be upon us, and Easter following. Many people see Faith, and particularly the Christan Faith as something to console and comfort us as we live our lives in a cruel world. That is the case in some ways, but the Christan Gospel also challenges us, and we ignore this challenge at our peril.

Lent is about engaging with the Challenge of the Christian Gospel, and exploring how we can learn from Jesus’ life and teachings, and express that truth in our lives and through our worship.

Lent Starts on Ash Wednesday 14^th February (Yes, it displaces Valentine’s Day!) with our Ash Wednesday Service at  Kelly at 7pm.

During Lent, there will be a Lent Course, at the Rectory, on both Monday at 5pm, and Thursday at 7pm. This year we will be exploring the Holy Week Services or Liturgies. There seemed to be quite a bit of confusion and misunderstanding as to what these beautiful service were for and there position in the tradition and life of the church. There is a great deal we can learn from them, and so this is an opportunity to prepare to take a full and meaningful part in the life and worship of the Chruch at this most special time.

With love and prayers,

Philip

From the Parish Priest
Dear Friends,

Christmas and Easter are celebrated by all Christians and all churches and communities. Occasionally there are more local celebrations that become a priority in a particular area.  As I write this, not only are we looking forward to all the celebrations around our Lord’s birth: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany etc. and looking forward to all the hopes and possibilities of a new year, but this January also sees the start of the Centenary Celebrations of Sabine Baring-Gould at Lewtrenchard, which we can all join support and join in with.

Baring-Gould was, and still is, a major figure in our national life, and it is quite right that we are celebrating his life and legacy here at what was his home.

We may be tempted to look back at him, and his eccentric Victorian ways with certain fondness, amusement and bewilderment, but we must remember as we start a new year in our time, that Baring-Gould was living in his time and working to proclaim the Kingdom of God in the best and most relevant way possible. No doubt, in one hundred years’ time, our Great, Great grand children will look back at us with fond bewilderment at some of our ways, and yet we are only trying to do the same thing that Sabine Baring-Gould was in his lifetime.

The celebrations and commemorations for my illustrious predecessor will begin on the 2^nd January and are attended to elsewhere on this website. Please do read and discover all about them and then come and join.

At the heart of Baring-Gould’s faith was a deep veneration of Jesus, the word made flesh, whose birth we celebrate in December, and we are reminded of the great feast of the Epiphany every time we look towards the East in St. Peter’s. As we celebrate his legacy this year let us also celebrate and proclaim God’s great love for us all.

May I wish you a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful, prosperous, and happy new year.

With love and prayers,

Philip

From The Parish Priest

Every time I escort a coffin from the lichgate up any of our church paths to the main door I always recite the words of Psalm 122: I was glad when they said to me let us go to the house of the Lord.

It is often used in services for when someone is entering a church building, most obviously, and recently, at the Coronation of our King. It was originally written about going in to the Great Temple in Jerusalem, and the importance of both the temple and of Jerusalem to the Jewish people. In the Christian tradition the new Jerusalem is the Kingdom of heaven opened to all believers by Christ.

Verses 6 and 7 of the Psalm say O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: May they prosper who love you Peace be within your walls and tranquillity within your palaces.

The dreadful scenes of human suffering that have assaulted our eyes through our television Screens, newspapers and the internet from the Holy Land make that prayer even more urgent that it ever has been.

Human beings’ ill treatment of each other, of whatever side, politics or religion is always wrong, and the continuous acrimony and bitterness that continues between societies in that sacred part of the world is a source of deep sadness and shame on the human race.

We, as a society or individuals, may not be able to affect the immediate future of the Holy Land, but we can affect the human race by making sure we treat each and every other person with the respect and love that they are entitled to simply by being a human being created and loved by God.

As we spend this month remembering the horrors of times past: Wars, and gun powder plots etc. let us also our responsibilities to learn from the past and work for a peaceful and bright future for the whole world.

With love and prayers,
Philip

From The Parish Priest

October is a lovely month… fairly free of major occasions. In Church life we are also free from major festivities. There are plenty of those in November and December, but the calendar of saints presents us with a number of people who exampled Christian faith and service in their lifetime.

There are some of the saints from the early days of the 7th Century Celtic church: Ethelburga, Wilfrid, Paulinus and Cedd. We remember them now with great thanks and fondness, but we are foolish if we forget that it was a time of great disagreement and debate. There are St. Francis of Assisi and St. Edward the confessor, who did much to shape and influence the life and mission of the church in their time despite many challenges and setbacks.. There is Martin Luther, a major figure in the Reformation who challenged the church’s hypocrisy and corruption, and there are Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer and William Tyndale who all died in the violence of the Reformation.

There is Bishop James Hannington who was killed taking the Gospel to Uganda at the end of the 19th Century, Elizabeth Fry, the great Quaker campaigner for proper treatment of offenders in prison, and Nurse Edith Cavell, martyred during the first world war. Each of these people, and thousands more all faced the challenges of their time to live and proclaim the Gospel. Sometimes they worked with the blessing of the church, sometimes they fought the church tooth and nail, and yet they are all remembered by the church for their faith and service.

Also, St Luke, the writer of the Third Gospel, as well as SS Simon and Jude, who, because of the similarity of his name to Judas is regarded as the Patron Saint of Lost causes and hopeless cases, which all if the aforementioned people must have felt at some point.

As we approach All Saintstide at the start of next month, let us look to those who have gone before us for inspiration and encouragement as we seek to live and serve with the challenges that face us today.

With love and prayers,

Philip

Well!  What a Summer we have had! 
For our church family, there has been much to celebrate!

Summer Celebration at Roadford Lake. This was such a wonderful occasion. Well attended by joyful Christians, who, with the help of Menestrouthi brass, brought the warmth of the sunshine into the hall as the real thing decided to hide behind teeming rain all morning!!

The visit of Origin Voices over the following weekend was wonderful in so many ways. It was so good to see people from all over the Mission Community supporting all the events. The worship on Sunday was a real treat and the Concert at Upcott surpassed all our expectations! Everyone who has spoken to me about it has said that the weekend left them feeling so much better.

As I write, there is a great deal of anticipation in the preparation being done at Lewtrenchard for two Church Family Weddings, we are looking forward to a wonderful Ruby Wedding Celebration at Lifton, and much work has been done to prepare for yet another wonderful Flower Festival weekend at Broadwoodwidger, which I am sure will be well supported by all.  As the psalmist says in Psalm 133:  Behold how good and pleasant a thing it is to dwell together in unity….

Much of the study of Church History is the study of arguments and fallings out…., and yet it should be of a people who live and worship together in love and work to proclaim God’s truth. I am certain that the last few weeks have been the latter rather than the former!

A huge thank you to everyone who supported these events in any way… Let us build on this and work together, not just for special occasions like these, but in our daily lives and in support of our Sunday worship.

With love and prayers,

Philip

From The Parish Priest

Dear friends,

The first half of the year has so far been rather hectic. The end of Christmas leading on to Lent and Easter, with all the preparations for and celebrations of the Coronation, there seems to have been very little time to think. And yet thinking is so important.

We need to think about what we say and do, otherwise we can find ourselves in all kinds of messes!

Up to now, the church has been busy celebrating and following our Lord’s life and we have moved between fasts and feasts and some speed. The last of these major occasions falls on the first Sunday of June. Trinity Sunday. The day when we are called to think about the very nature of God. Not an easy thing to do. As God is other, so we will never have the right language to describe or explain him fully. The Concept of the Trinity. Three beings, separate but completely one is beyond our human telling, and many people have tried, and failed, to explain it. No piece of artwork, and no written or spoken treatise will ever do it justice, and just leaves us asking more questions.

But what God IS is LOVE, and although it may not be explainable, it is something that we are all able to experience. I do not understand every experience I have. I do not understand the science or engineering that makes an A380 take off from the ground and fly across the pacific at 40000 feet, but I do know that it is true and I have had a Gin and Tonic while looking down at the ocean 40000 feet below. Human being crave understanding, but sometimes it is beyond us and that does not make our experiences false.
May our combined experience of the love of God in Christ Jesus, and the grace of the Holy Spirit, help to bring us all together to serve God in each other.

With love and prayers,

Philip

From The Parish Priest

The Coronation of a King, or Queen, in this realm, has not recently been a common occurrence. There are many people who have not lived to witness one, and the youngest of those who were alive to witness our late Queen’s coronation are all receiving their pensions!

At the heart of the Coronation Ceremony is the anointing with oil. This is an ancient and biblical practice to signify both the solemnity of the occasion and the prayer for the Holy Spirit to guide our new King. Do come and join us for our Vigil Service to Pray for King Charles on the evening before his coronation.

The Coronation Service will indeed be solemn, because it will recognise the seriousness of what is taking place, but it will certainly not be miserable, but Joyful, as it is, quite rightly, a celebration.

As we mark and celebrate this special occasion, let us remember our calling to joyfully celebrate the faith of Jesus Christ with our worship both acknowledging the power and awesomeness of God and also sharing the pure Joy of his love.

Including the Coronation there are three great celebrations this month.

Unlike a coronation, the Feasts of Ascension and Pentecost come round every year, but that does not mean that they are not worthy of proper celebration. We will be celebrating Ascension Day with an Evening Service and party, and Pentecost with our usual Sunday Services as advertised. Please do come and join us as we celebrate God’s love in the life of our Church and nation.

God Save the King!

With love and prayers,

Philip