Sunday Service 30 October 2022

As All Hallows’ Eve and All Saint’s Day approaches, we gathered this morning to share stories of those we have loved and lost, and to celebrate the Saints who have inspired us. We brought our offerings of remembrance (photos, objects), treading on crunchy and colourful autumn leaves as we approached our altar. If you missed it, you can catch up on our special All Hallows’ service here:

Sunday Service 23 October 2022

This morning was the first Sunday of the Kingdom Season. Wren helped us to think about how to be more inclusive and the power of language.

Sunday Service 16 October 2022

'I am the vine; you are the branches' John 15.

This morning, in this week of our Creation Season, Richard spoke to us about the two books which connect us with God; the Bible and Creation.

The readings were from Exodus 3 1-14 and Luke 12 22-31.

Insulating our roof

After years of planning and fundraising, we are finally starting work on a new roof! Our church building, rebuilt after a fire in the 1970s and extended just before the millenium, has always had a problematic roof of concrete tiles. Uninsulated and leaking it didn’t fulfill it’s purpose!

Our replacement roof is made with zinc covering a thick layer of insulation made of recycled denim - just like our vicar’s jeans! PAVATEXTIL is a soft thermo-acoustic insulation board based on cotton fibres from recycled jeans and velvet (85%) and polyester fibres (15%). The carbon footprint of these materials is significantly less that concrete tiles and should have a much lower maintenance cost as well as reducing our heating bills.

A huge thanks to the brilliant:

If you would like to donate towards the cost of the roof then please visit our Giving Page!

Sunday Service 25th September 2022

This morning, in our second service in Creation Season, we welcomed the Rev. Dr Jan Goodair, Area Environment Champion for Leeds. Jan reminded us that we are not at the centre of the universe, we are part of God’s Creation and we need to care for every living creature.

Sunday Service 18th September 2022

'Lets stop building bigger barns. Lets build a house, a community, a world where love can dwell.'

This week is the start of our new series about Creation. Paul talked to us about consumption and reminded us that life does not exist in an abundance of possessions. Putting our trust in God and pursuing giving are the paths we are to follow.

The readings were from Exodus 16: 2-5 and 14-20 and Luke 12: 13-34.

Sunday Service 4th September 2022

Catch up on this morning’s action-packed all-ages service, led by Graeme with the excellent assistance of our brilliant kids. We considered the boxes we find ourselves put in and how God can liberate us from them. Perhaps you can recreate the joyful cardboard chaos at home!

Sunday Service 21 August 2022

"God loves us because it's God's nature, and will, to love. And it's ours." As part of our Summer of Love series, Pauline speaks through personal experience and New Testament figures about the love of God, loving others, and loving ourselves in the clarity of who we truly are.

Sunday Service 14 August 2022

This morning, in the next of our Summer of Love series, we were expecting Jonathan to share with us but unfortunately, he tested positive for COVID so Heston stepped in at the last moment.

Pride Sunday 7 August 2022

“Perfect love drives out fear”. What a privilege to hear from Hayley yesterday morning as we celebrated Pride Sunday. Don’t miss her moving story of the painful discrimination she encountered and, ultimately, the joy of the liberation she found through Jesus Christ “who fills us with his perfect love, who includes, who tells us: you belong to me.”

After our service we headed down to join the parade

Lammas

The 1st August, besides being Yorkshire Day, is also Lammas Day.

Lammas is from the Anglo-Saxon word blaef-mass, or loaf mass. It marks the first harvest when the first grain is gathered, ground, and baked into bread known as the Lammas Loaf which in early Christianity would have been blessed by the church during mass.

In early Ireland, and probably elsewhere, it was not good to harvest grain before Lammas. If you had to then that probably meant that the harvest from the previous year had run out before the next harvest was ready - a similar crisis to that represented on Earth Overshoot Day.

In an age when crops can be imported all year round, we tend to forget just how important this time was to our ancestors - the failure of the harvest meant starvation and death. Early August was a time to celebrate the fruits of the first harvest, feasting and life.

This year, though, we are reminded of the importance of harvest and grain. The war in Ukraine has stretched food supplies to many parts of the world. The changing climate is also reducing crops with famines occurring in South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen and elsewhere. The "Global Report on Food Crises” - led by the UN along with 16 partner organizations – says that more than 193 million people across 53 countries are experiencing acute hunger and require urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance. The World Food Program has similar findings.

Our food supplies seem so secure but they are not. Our current food systems are not very resilient and we need to find ways of producing enough food for the whole world in a changing climate.

So, as you eat your bread on Lammas Day, think about where all your food comes from, the people involved in producing it. Rejoice in your abundance but remember those whose harvest is poor and think about ways in which you can value your food and share it at the global table of our Lord.

“Make Us to Be Your Bread

We pray for those people who are in poverty;
help us to learn how to share what we have,
until they sense your abundant supply.

We appeal for those people who are in hunger;
Make us to be your bread, broken for others,
to share and be shared until all are fed”
— Adapted from "Liturgies from Below"

Sunday Service 31 July 2022

This morning our service was led by Toby Parsons and Angela Birkin with Adriaan sharing his thoughts on the first of our new series entitled “Summer of Love”

Earth Overshoot Day 2022

Earth Overshoot Day marks the date each year when humanity has used all the ecological resources that Earth regenerates during that entire year.

This year, Earth Overshoot Day falls on 28 July

In other words, if we were to live sustainably on this planet we would take a year or more to use the ecological resources that the Earth can regenerate in that year. Instead, this year, we will have consumed those resources in 208 days. That means that for the rest of the year we will be drawing on “capital” resources and reducing the the planet’s capacity to support life for the following year.

Another way of looking at it is that, when we were living within the Earth’s biocapacity we only needed the one Earth in order to supply our wants. Now, if we were to be able to sustain our wants, we would need 1.75 Earths.

But of course, there is no Planet B.

In order to #MoveTheDate, in order to allow all life to thrive within the means of our planet, we need to act.

We need to differentiate between our wants and our needs. We need to learn to live with enough rather than too much.

Maybe we should take a lesson from the People of Israel in the wilderness as they journeyed from the slavery of Egypt to the Promised Land. Maybe we should learn what is enough and praise God for “our daily bread”.

You can read more on the Earth Overshoot Day website and on the Joy in Enough website.