See our ‘Social Events’ page to read all about it!

We’ve been patrolling the streets of Hucknall for 6 months already! That’s gone amazingly quick!

Last Friday (27th April) we were invited to the Ashfield Civic Awards. We had been nominated for, and won, the award for ‘Community Group of the Year’ for the Hucknall area. This is brilliant news and gives us even more publicity, which we’ve had a lot of in the short time the scheme has been up-and-running.

Once again thanks go to the Street Pastor teams, all of those who pray for us, and (most importantly) God. And also once again we pray that God will continue to have us in the right place at the right time for those who may need our help.

We continue to build relationships with those who are out on Friday nights – groups of youth, regular drinkers, bar staff etc.

Please pray for:

• Groups of youth hanging around our route (e.g. the tram-stop, Tesco, Leisure Centre and Wilko’s areas).

• Underage drinking.

• Protection for all Street Pastors whilst out on Friday nights.

• Pray that God would give us wisdom and discernment, and the words to say to people.

• People who are thinking of getting involved – either as a Street Pastor or Prayer Pastor.

• ‘Operation Animism’ – A Police operation against anti-social behaviour in the town.

WELL DONE to everyone!

Churches Together announce plans for this year’s Moorgreen Show! (Click on the link to read more).

Sermon for Maunday Thursday

Sermon for Holy Saturday

Easter Message

We meet in the Hicks Hall next door to St John’s Church where we have a wonderful array of children’s play equipment for youngsters to explore and enjoy. Parents have a fab time too catching up with a cup of tea and plenty of time to chat and enjoy the company of their children away from home. And every week the Vicar drops in to join in some songs and read a story…

Everyone is welcome and the cost is still only 75p a child!

We look forward to welcoming you!

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”

Or to put it another less gender specific way:

What will you gain, if you own the whole world but destroy yourself?

Or again:

What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?

In recent months there have been a succession of young celebrity deaths – Amy Winehouse and Whitney Housten to mention just two examples. People who – on the surface at least – seemed to have everything life could offer, except perhaps meaning. And it wouldn’t be difficult to find other examples from the worlds of politics, business or sport: success in our culture is so often measured in material terms or column inches. I cannot imagine what it is like to earn millions of pounds a year but I suspect it is very hard to retain much sense of moral authority or reality unless you give it all away.

What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?

The extreme examples of moral decadence, greed and self-obsession that we hear about on TV and in the press might encourage us to think that Jesus wasn’t talking to us. But he was. For we are all susceptible to the pressures of the acquisitive, consumerist culture in which we live.

Life, for all of us, might be described as a journey towards the real you. How often we might reflect on events and say to ourselves “if only I hadn’t said that!’ or ‘if I had my time again I would have accepted that job’ or even ‘why has it taken me 30 years to discover a passion for making cupcakes!’ [just to be clear, the first two examples apply to me, the third doesn’t!]

When we reflect on our lives we might see them as a succession of choices, co-incidences, mistakes, regrets, lessons learned. Our attitude to life is vital. We can choose to see life as a glass half full or a glass half empty. We can count our blessings or we can moan about our problems.

Whatever approach we take, life is a journey of searching, questioning, discovering the real you. It has the potential to be very exciting, positive and vibrant, or, tragedy can mar our lives and leave us feeling bereft, constrained, aimless, trapped. And yet even in those difficult circumstances we still have the choice as to how we respond as anyone who has read the stories of Terry Waite or John McCarthy will know.

One of my favourite theologians, who I may have mentioned before, is the American Walter Brueggemann. He started one of his sermons with words similar to these.

Life can seem like a rat race – but the problem is that even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat. The good news – he continued – is that you’re not a rat. You are a child of God, made in God’s image.

God does not want us to think of ourselves as rats. As Jesus said: “I have come that all may have life and life in abundance.”

So we must resist society’s relentless attempts to turn us into rats. That is our only option if we are to seek the abundant life that Jesus offers and to reclaim ourselves as children of God.

So how can you go about discovering the real you, and in the process avoid destroying yourself or your soul?

The Christian faith is essentially about our relationships with God, with God’s creation, with one another and with ourselves. If we give each of these a proper priority I think we will go a very long way to finding that abundant life that Jesus promises.

Let’s start with our relationship with ourselves. Jesus taught us to love our neighbour of course but added two important words – as ourselves. We cannot love others well unless we first love ourselves – so Jesus calls us to take care of ourselves: that means self-respect, living healthily, affirming our skills and talents.

Then there are our relationships with one another, not only our friends and families but those we find difficult or disagree with whether at home, in church, at work or just around town. Difference is one of God’s great gifts to us all, yet respecting difference so often seems one of the greatest challenges we face. Our relationships with one another should not be competitive or self-centred but relationships that are open, trusting, forgiving and rooted in a commitment to learning from and listening to one another.

Thirdly, our relationship with God’s creation; it is clearly in need of healing whether we think of disasters, injustice, war, inequality, poverty – the list could go on. It might seem that we are powerless in the face of such problems and yet there is always much we can do to demonstrate that we are trying to live differently in the light of Jesus.

And that is what we are called to do – to demonstrate that Jesus calls us to dance to a different tune, and not simply to accept the cultural norms of our society that exploit the planet and the peoples who occupy it in the name of so-called progress (which, let’s be frank, is often simply a euphemism for profit).

Here’s one very simple way to live differently.

Who takes advantage of BOGOFF offers in the supermarket?

Do you consider the free item to be free or that you have purchased it a half price?

The truth is that someone has already paid the other half for you – and it is almost certainly the manufacturer who has paid that price and not the supermarket. BOGOFF’s are not free – it’s just that we are not being asked to pay the price.

I suggest that we do take advantage of the BOGOFF offer but that we do something creative with the item or its value – for instance, we could give it away to a project like Engage or give the monetary value of the item away, as an additional gift either to the church or to another charity.

That way we are converting the BOGOFF item into something much more valuable and we are addressing the injustice that lies behind the so-called offer. It is small steps like this that will transform God’s world.

Finally, there is our relationship with God. Another of my favourite theologians is Harry Williams. Harry Williams was a member of the Community of the Resurrection, the monks at Mirfield in Yorkshire. And he was one of the most creative spiritual writers of the second half of the 20^th century. Some of his books are still in print and he is well worth reading.

Harry Williams’ autobiography was called ‘Some Day I’ll find you’, a wonderfully simple description of the spiritual life, our search for God. This was one of the most significant books I read in my 20s for in it Williams is brutally honest with the difficulties he faced in his life – emotional, sexual, mental, and spiritual. And it was by recognising, accepting and praying his way through those challenges – rather than hiding from them or praying for them to go away – that he found God. The healing and health that only God can provide is often to be found in the mess, and not in our desire for a nirvana that lives on only in our imaginations.

One of Harry Williams’ books is called ‘Becoming what I am’ – a series of talks in which he illustrates that it is in prayer that we can come closest to our true identities as children of God. I close with a quote from that book that describes what is going on when we find it difficult to pray:

“………..” Amen.

This will be at St John’s Church Community Halls, on March 10^th from 11am–2pm

There will be Craft and Gift Stalls to suit all tastes, including:

The ‘Nearly New’ stalls are all focussed on Mums and Kids –

Ladieswear, Chick-lit Books & Chick-flick Films!, Accessories & Trinkets, Gifts & Nic-Nacs, Baby Equipment, Children’s Clothes, Toys & Games,

Our kitchens will be open, offering tempting Hot and Cold Drinks, alongside Delicious Home-made Cakes and Snacks!

Looking for a last-minute Mothers’ Day gift? Or just browsing? Popping in for a chat with friends? Or looking for a lunch-time snack?

ALL ARE VERY WELCOME!!