What is the Service of Wholeness and Healing?

This monthly online streamed service is part of our ministry as a Healing Hub Church.  Our journey with God and with one another is a journey towards wholeness of mind, body and spirit.  Our service is a way to bring the whole of ourselves, and everything and everyone we care about, to God, asking for his healing touch.

The service is every fourth Sunday of the month at 5pm and lasts around 30 minutes.  The link is always on the website a few days before. We use words and prayers from the Christian Community in Iona.  It is inclusive in breadth and in language.  We come together acknowledging that we all need God’s loving touch in different ways.  We offer an open space for a time of quiet prayer and reflection.  If you are unable to join us at 5pm on the day, all our services remain available to join in later via our website, or search YouTube or Facebook for St John the Evangelist, Shirley.

St John’s is a Healthy Healing Hub church, linked with other churches and the Guild of Health and St Raphael, a national Christian organisation. You can read more about this here: https://www.stjohnsshirley.org.uk/2022/12/12/st-johns-church-a-healthy-healing-hub/

This service of Healing and Wholeness and our Eucharistic life together are a way of inviting God into the heart of all that matters to us and allowing him to reveal his heart of purposeful, healing love in our lives and community.

If you would like to talk to someone or would like a candle to be lit to offer silent prayer intentions during the service please contact the Vicar of a member of the ministry team.

Next Service of Healing and Wholeness: Sunday 25th June at 5pm online

St John’s Church: a Healthy Healing Hub

Bringing Belonging, Meaning and Hope

The Healthy Healing Hub Project is a nationwide initiative run by the Guild of Health and St Raphael, a Christian charity committed to healing in its widest sense. St John’s Church joined this partnership with the Guild and other churches earlier this year and became a Healthy Healing Hub. Our aim as a Hub Church is to promote health, wellbeing and healing in our local community, working collaboratively to identify and alleviate need.

As a Healing Hub Church, we recognise the impact of the pandemic and economic downturn on the most vulnerable among us. We have a holistic outlook, caring for mind, body and spirit. Our work and witness in the healing ministry of St John’s Church community is missional in its focus on pastoral and ecological concerns and our commitment to Inclusive Church.

Please pray for St John’s as a Healthy Healing Hub, and the active conversations that are taking place as we discern together the direction of the Spirit in this work and God’s plan for the flourishing of all.

Our healing ministry is the work of the whole Church community, resourced and supported by the Guild as needed and connecting with other churches and organisations. As part of our daily eucharistic sacrifice, we offer our souls and bodies, our time and resources and open our buildings to those in need. We pray that St John’s will become a place of encouragement and renewal – bringing Belonging, Meaning and Hope.

More information from The Revd Lu Gale, or email [email protected]

Help make St John’s a Warm Space

During this cold weather and times of hardship for many people, St John’s, like many local churches are already, is planning to offer a warm space of welcome for our community.

To help us learn more together, there is a short online training session through Eventbrite this Wednesday run by the Warm Welcome Campaign, to give some practical tips on how to get started.  It’s free, only 45 minutes and hopefully will inspire and equip us to take this forward.

As a ‘Healthy Healing Hub’ church this is part of our outreach and service, so do think about how you can help- on a rota- with making this happen, even if you can’t tune into the online information session. We will need volunteers of all kinds once we get going: setting up, chatting with people, providing something simple and warming like soup and a roll, so please pray and contact the Vicar or a churchwarden if you would like to find out more or think you can help in any way. Thank you.

[email protected]

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/creating-a-welcoming-space-tickets-474223052917?aff=eand

Churches Together in Shirley Unity Service this Sunday 6pm

Everyone is welcome at this Service on 23rd January at St George the Martyr, Shirley.

It is a lovely opportunity to be together, either in-person or online, to celebrate our unity and pray for our Christian witness in our community.

Use this link https://youtu.be/jmDhdTVnrgQ or just come to St George’s (there will be masks and social distancing.)

Please pray for the work of Churches Together at this time when healing is so needed in our lives and communities.

Healing and Wholeness Service today at 5pm

Streamed service this evening, at 5pm, a quiet half an hour of reflection and prayer for the start of Holy Week. Click here to join: https://youtu.be/w9_sEWTattI

Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday) by Sister Claire, SMMI

Copyright:

Fuller Seminary Archives and Special Collections, “COLLECTION 0064: Collection of Sr. Claire, SMMI Biblical Art, 1980-2003”
(2018). List of Archival Collections. 154.
https://digitalcommons.fuller.edu/findingaids/154

“From Principle to Practice”

A Churches Together in South London (CTSL) debate on how to encourage a more diverse and inclusive leadership in our churches

This online discussion on 4th November sought to tackle some key issues central not only to CTSL, but to our own Church of England. Namely: how can we all be proactive in putting diversity and inclusion at the forefront of our planning and leadership of church projects, not least those where we combine resources and co-operate with other Christian churches in our area?

As might be expected for such an ambitious topic, the event was successful in raising awareness and spurring us on – but left it to us to navigate ways forward within our own communities.  There is a pressing need for us to seek God’s mind at a local level and to make issues of social inclusion and justice relatable in our lives together, so this in itself marked a significant way forward.  As lockdowns force on us new ways of living as a Eucharistic community, we are looking for signs of our times, for those moments of ‘Kairos,’ that invite us into God-being-ness, which, with prayer and collaboration, start to be the living stones of the Kingdom.

First to speak from her lived-experience was Chine McDonald, Head of Community Fundraising and Public Engagement at Christian Aid, author, and Trustee of Greenbelt, Christians Against Poverty and Christians in Media.  The quote, “from principle to practice” comes from her – itself a quote from Dr Elizabeth Henry, an anti-racism activist who has advised the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Her full quote speaks of the need to move beyond willingness to tackle racial inequalities to consolidating that goodwill in action and outcomes. 

We have to start where we are. We cannot be in that moment of God-given change if we are stuck in the past, or busy projecting forward our own expectations.  St John’s is part of Inclusive Church, and we are called to follow Jesus’ example of servanthood if our ministry is to bring life and healing to those around us and beyond our church community.  We are called to empty ourselves of what has gone before, and to listen to the “idle tales” of the marginalised that speak of resurrection life.

The second speaker was Richard Reddie, Director of Justice and Inclusion for Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, author, commentator and researcher.  His word was one of unity, urging considered thought and positive action to promote inclusion, and building on Chine’s assertion that “diversity is a fact; inclusion is a choice.”

These are the two questions the speakers left with us to consider together: What are the barriers to creating diverse leadership in our churches? Is racial diversity in leadership an afterthought or a forethought?

Claire Barracliffe 11/11/20

Healing Service, tonight at 5pm – online

Please join us for our Service of Healing and Wholeness this evening at 5pm. It’s a gentle and reflective time of prayer, using an Iona Community liturgy, and lasts for around half an hour. A chance to join to pray for God’s healing and blessing for the world, people we know, and ourselves at this present time.

To find the link go to the red Menu bar at the top of this page and press ‘Worship.’ Then press ‘Live Streams.’ The Healing Service will show at the top of the list as the next Service to be streamed.

"Beloved, let us love one another" 1 John 4:7

copyright: Jacob Haywood

Today’s lectionary reading is from 1 John 4: 7-10

7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love… 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Here are some prayers from Inclusive Church for Epiphany, which we celebrated on Sunday:

You share your love with every people;

we draw limits of race and creed.

Lord have mercy

You immerse yourself in love of life;

we hold back in fear and shame.

Christ have mercy

You change the water into wine;

we refuse to let our hearts be moved.

Lord have mercy

Christ has broken down the dividing wall that made us strangers to one another;

he has made us one humanity

that God might be all in all;

he is our life, our hope, our peace.

A poem

by Christopher Herbert, entitled Hedgehogs:

The hedgehogs

come snuffling and scuffling

through the garden

like old men walking along a path

Lord, thank you for the strangeness of hedgehogs.

At the beginning of this new year, we thank God for all that comes from the edges of our understanding and experience; and for all that challenges us from the highways and along the hedgerows, pointing us to deeper ways to love and pray. May we walk a wiser path and delight in your presence with us O God. When we feel our own prickliness to difference and put limits on your love, speak to us by your Spirit and immerse us in your love for all you have made and all who seek you. Christ, be our peace. Amen.

Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church, Canterbury Press 2008, p.149

Christopher Herbert, Prayers for Children, The National Society and Church House Publishing, 1993, p.48

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