Church Family Weekend Preview!

Revd Ian Lewis, the vicar of St Bartholomew’s, will speaking on 21st Jan. This is a chance to a preview of meeting and hearing Ian before he is our guest speaker at our Church Family week end away in June 2007.

Men’s Breakfast #3

Sat 20th January 8.30am – 10am. Please put this date in your diary and watch for details of where we will be meeting.

First Sunday of the Month is ‘Family Sunday’ at St. Swithun’s!

In the New Year the 10am service on the first Sunday of each month will be for all the family, from 1 to 101! The service will last less than an hour (that’s our guarantee!), include a mix of well-known hymns and newer songs children (from 1 to 101!) enjoy, sometimes played by our young people’s band, a short talk which makes sense to people of all ages, fun and laughter, and refreshments afterwards with a chance to meet old friends and make new ones. Everyone is warmly welcome!

From January to Easter we will be following the baby Jesus as he grows up, and seeing how he can be relevant to our lives today.

January 7th Jesus as a baby
February 4th Jesus as a boy
March 4th Jesus as our friend (10 minutes longer as includes baptism celebration)
April 1st Jesus as our rescuer
April 8th Jesus as the King (Easter Day)

New Year Resolutions

Dear Friends,

The other day I came across some celebrity New Year Resolutions from three years ago, New Year’s Day, 2004 :-

Paula Radcliffe: ‘I want to stay fit and get ready for Athens’;

Tim Henman: ‘I’ve been injured and so I want to climb the world rankings again’;

Matthew Pinsent: ‘I want to savour Olympic Year and do all I can for the London 2012 bid.

As New Year resolutions go, these seem pretty good. They are optimistic, challenging and, in their own terms, very worthwhile aims for the coming year.

But looking back from the future, they make rather sad reading.

You probably remember what happened to Paula Radcliffe in Athens; Tim Henman couldn’t resist the march of time and he continues to fall in the world rankings; and even the euphoria of winning the 2012 bid has now been replaced by wrangling and recriminations over contracts and costings.

So as I look back at these resolutions from three years on, I find them deeply challenging. What am I aiming at in my life right now that won’t look a bit silly a few years from now? And how about at the end of my life? Which of my aspirations will still look as worthwhile then as they do now?

A man was reading the details of another man’s will in The Times. His friend asked him, ‘How much did he leave?’ ‘All of it,’ he replied. It’s an old joke but still true.

Jesus would say to us, ‘Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.’

He would say, ‘What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?’

Jim Elliott was a young American who with four friends went to South America in the1950s to try and bring the message of Jesus Christ to the Auca Indians of the Ecuadorean rain forest. They were murdered by those they were trying to befriend. He once wrote,

‘He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.’

That sounds like a good New Year resolution to me.

Happy New Year!

Tim Ling

Vicar, St. Swithun’s Church Bathford