SONNING   DEANERY   PRAYER   CYCLE
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No. 81                                                         September 2019

This month our special focus is on St Paul’s Wokingham, St Nicholas Embrook and Woosehill

 Please pray for:

Rector & Area Dean:  Rev’d Richard Lamey
Team Vicar:                      Rev’d Patrick Mukholi,
Assistant Priest:            Rev’d Judi Hattaway
Associate Priest:           Rev’d Jane Kraft
Church Wardens:         David Ruddock and Peter Wells
PCC Secretary:              Lesley Ruddock
Treasurer:                         Lyn Austen
Office Administrator:Louise Cole
Director of Music:       Louise Turner

The Community Church St Nicholas Emmbrook

Pro Wardens:               Liz Gallagher and Fiona Albinson
Secretary:                       Anne Armitage
Treasurer:                      Tony Roberts
Parish Pioneer:            Paul Armitage

Woosehill Community Church

Methodist Minister: Rev’d Catherine Bowstead
Methodist Preacher: Doreen Murgatroyd

In the Parishes please pray for:

• That the insights we learnt through the PMC process about each other and about our mission to the community will become the essence of our identity, enabling us to see God at work all around us
• Our new pastoral care groups at St Paul’s (called Tithings) will become a valued way of offering each other support and encouragement on the road as disciples
• For new leaders and volunteers to respond to God’s call on their lives
• For each Church to continue to look as if we believe what we sing, enjoy what we do and can’t imagine being anywhere else on a Sunday morning and during the week. That we are in the place God calls us to be and the places He sends us into in his name and in his Spirit.

In the Deanery please pray for:

• St Eligius Church, Alpha Course starting on September 24^th
• St John the Baptist Crowthorne, Christian Spirituality Course: Mondays Sept: 9,16, 23,30 Oct: 7,14,21.
• All young people starting new school, colleges, employment
• All our Churches as activities start up again after the break and that we all return refreshed and re-invigorated..

Hazel Berry:

A REFLECTION FOR THE DEANERY SYNOD AGM EUCHARIST
on Luke 5.1-11
June 25^th 2019

A good moment to think about what is a Deanery? And what is it for?

1)    The Deanery is a necessary legal and administrative function, a means of communication and connection between the parish and the Diocese, between the clergy and the Bishop.

2)    The Deanery is a reminder of the breadth of the Church of England in all of its range and adventure, that we are connected and united across different ethical positions and different ways of reading Scripture and listening to the voice and guidance of God. We do not get to choose who we worship next to Sunday by Sunday and we do not get to choose who else is an Anglican. The challenge in that is to make sure that we actually actively engage with each other and don’t leave those differences unspoken but dominant in the corner.

3)    The Deanery is a community of prayer and worship who support and encourage each other, and journey together-

e.g. Synod

• when someone local introduces an idea
• the prayer cycle
• the new support groups we are setting up of Wardens and Treasurers… all allow us to know that we don’t travel alone but are part of something bigger and broader and wider and more effective than just us. In some ways the Deanery is a local antidote to too much parochialism. It opens us up to new ideas and new possibilities and in that openness and potential God can work wonderfully.

4)    And in all of this, as the Church, we are called to let down our nets in deep water. At Diocesan Synod this month Bishop Steven gave an address on the reading we have just heard from Luke Chapter 5. He establishes two principles-

• that the call to let down our nets is from Christ himself and Christ alone,
• that letting down our nets will look different in every Deanery and parish. It will not be the same because every place is unique and particular and so is every Church community. Such difference is, to quote, “something to delight in for its own sake.”

Read more

Who’s Who in the Sonning Deanery

Area Dean: Revd Richard Lamey H: 0118 327 9116
W: 0118 979 2122.  click to email

Lay Chair: John Smith 01189 290 996 click to email

Secretary: Bridget Crossley 01344 751456 click to email

Treasurer: Vacant

Quinquennial Inspection Secretary: Michael Byrne

Ecumenical Representative: David Hare

Members of the Standing Committee:  Revd Canon Julie Ramsbottom, John Smith, Revd Richard Lamey, Bridget Crossley, Gillian Gyenes,  Pauline Humphreys, Judith Scott, Rev’d Catherine Vaughan, Sharon White.

Representatives on Diocesan Synod: Revd Piers Bickersteth, Gillian Gyenes, Revd Hannah Higginson, Martin Hughes, Geraldine Lea, Revd Canon Andrew Marsden, Judith Scott, John Smith.

Intercessions: opening worship of the High Leigh Conference 2019

God of compassion, we remember today
Those for whom earthquakes, wind or fire
Has brought chaos and destruction.
For those who have lost everyone and everything they love.
We hold in our hearts and before you, those for whom the future is uncertain because of ill health, precarious relationships, or economic challenge; and those for whom the end of life in near.
And we share in in joy, with those experiencing new birth, new life and fresh starts – full of hope and expectation.
We bring before you our sacred and beautiful planet, teaming with life, renewal and healing forces.
May we do all we can to halt and mitigate the slow death of biodiversity
The continuous assault on what you have made.

God of mystery,
Where are you
When the world flings demands
Like a rain squall at the window,
When the pressure to perform steals us from ourselves,
When grasping for our future leaves us empty handed?
Where are you
When confusion is in heady ascendance,
When digging for surety lacerates and fragments?
Where are you in the fray,
In the tangled threads of feeling with no beginning or end?

God of our depths, be with us.
Do not rescue, but hold us;
Befriend, and reacquaint us
With our roots,
Our core,Our true desires.

Help us to know
How slowly moves the deep;
our connection to earth
and stars,
and the life that is you.

Help us to know
What we carry inside;
a space that does not always, or often,
know its shape
or size,
or what its purpose is.

Help us to know
That beyond our striving and our need
All you are is love,
And all we have is you.

Amen

 Alison Webster May 2019