Joyful, Joyful, we adore thee!

At a recent stewardship committee meeting, Jack Edmonds was reflecting on the past year of our church’s life. His reflection was that there was joy around the place! That’s a great thing. The scriptures tell us that ‘the joy of the Lord is our strength’. It is wonderful to be a part of the St James’ community this year, and I would definitely agree with Jack’s impression.

As we move into a new church program year, we will be informed by our survey and gatherings that we held over the summer. We’re going to try out some more gatherings and more Christian Education opportunities. There are dates in this newsletter both for an evening series where we’ll have dinner and watch ‘The Chosen’ together and for a Thursday morning series where we’ll go through Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Hopefully you’ll be able to join in one or both of those. There’s some energy to get a contemporary service back up and running – and while there’s no firm date for that (musicians have to rehearse and be prepared) do watch this space. Our contemporary service had been a service families came to – and bearing that in mind we’ll be keeping it crisp time wise and as accessible as possible to families.

I’m looking forward to our Stewardship Sunday on October 15th with a combined service at 9:30am followed by brunch. It will be a great occasion to get the whole church family together at one service to thank God for our church family and to joyfully pledge together to do our part to make St James’ happen in the year to come. Please do make that a priority in your schedule and I look forward to seeing you there!

Blessings,

Richard