Worship at Home resources for Sunday 24th May (with link for NEW Children’s Service)

Here are the locally produced resources for Worship at Home this Sunday, 24 May, the seventh Sunday of the Easter season and the Sunday between Ascension Day and Pentecost, and new and premiering this Sunday is a Lordsbridge Children’s Service (link below).

Worship at Home on Ascension Day

Today is Ascension Day. Most years this might pass you by, after all a weekday service is not always easy to fit in to the normal pattern of life. However, this year for many of us things are different, and perhaps you will have time today to read, reflect, listen and pray to the Worship at Home service we have created for Ascension Day.

You can download the service here. I’ve put the liturgy together and Canon Sue Wyatt has written the reflection. If you read it on a screen, you will be able to click on links to two hymns, posted on the Lordsbridge Online YouTube channel as well.

There are also some family activities found by Becca Gilbert on the website ‘Together at Home’. You don’t have to have children with you (or on video call) to enjoy the suggestions – I fancy some cloud gazing, and I appreciate the prompt to pray for other countries. In fact this week’s ‘thought for the week’ says something similar.

From today until Pentecost (31^st) I encourage you to follow the tradition of taking extra time to pray, urged also by our Archbishops. More specific ideas and support for doing this will follow in the next weekly notices mailing and in an issue of Lordsbridge Life.

Global pandemic, global prayer, global God

Some people have talked about this virus as being a great leveller. I think I know what they mean. Its impact has touched the lives of all of us, in some way, across the globe. There are few things in our increasingly atomised and divided societies that can have that effect.

But they are also wrong. Because its impact is not the same in every place or on every person.

Worship at Home resources for Sunday 17 May

Here are the locally produced resources for Worship at Home this Sunday, 17 May, the sixth Sunday of the Easter season.  This week we have a ‘guest reflection’ from Archdeacon Alex exploring the theme ‘the Spirit of truth’, a phrase used by Jesus in his final piece of teaching to his disciples. Thank you to those who have contributed this week.

* A Worship at Home service sheet with prayers for the Easter season from Canon Alison Myers. 
* Bible readings and reflection, this week from the Venerable Alex Hughes, Archdeacon of Cambridge, for the Lordsbridge Team

The Lordsbridge blessing

Did you see the video ‘The UK Blessing’ in which members of many different types of churches united in a song of blessing for the nation? There was even a quick clip of it in a main BBC News report about people turning to prayer and exploring faith during the pandemic. It is worth a look if you have not already seen it.

---

What or where is Lordsbridge?  The Lordsbridge Team of Churches is a group of 11 parishes and somewhat more worshipping communities (a benefice in Anglican terms) across 11 villages in an area of 9 by 5 miles just west of Cambridge.  If you don’t live in the Lordsbridge area substitute the name of where you live or work instead – the place for you to bless like this too.

---

Coming up in a week or two, there is another way that members of different churches will be uniting in prayer. And this one is one for us. Members of Orthodox, Catholic, Methodist, Pentecostal, Free and Anglican churches will again pick up the ancient tradition of praying for 11 days in preparation for Pentecost, in the movement initiated by our Archbishops and known as ‘Thy Kingdom Come’.

But praying for what?

One of the impacts of the lockdown is an increase in people caring for neighbours. As we begin the first very small steps in lifting the lockdown many of us are hoping (and perhaps praying) that the new relationships in our villages and streets will be sustained and will continue to enrich our communities. Many of us are involved in offering that kind of practical care to friends and neighbours. And I wonder if that care also includes praying for them – praying for their wellbeing, praying that they might find a place in the church community, praying that they might know the love of Jesus as you do, praying that God’s Spirit might transform them from the inside out.

In the Lordsbridge area, we are inviting all Christians to focus on this kind of prayer for some specific people from Ascension Day to Pentecost, 21^st May to 31^st May, as we pray ‘thy Kingdom come in Lordsbridge’. Because a church that both cares and prays is a strong church. And a community that is blessed by being both cared for and prayed for is a good place to live, and gives us a glimpse of the Kingdom of God.

Worship at Home resources for Sunday 10 May

Here are the locally produced resources for Worship at Home this Sunday, 10 May, the fifth Sunday of the Easter season.  Thank you to those who have contributed this week.

This Sunday, in the post-Easter series on incidents in the early church in the book of Acts, we hear the story of the martyrdom of Stephen.  And then, the gospel reading, we join the disciples who are listening to some of Jesus’ last teaching before his death and resurrection in which he assures them: “I am the way…”

God is not self-isolating

Many people are longing to be able to use the church buildings again. For some, this may be about meeting friends in the church community; for others, it may be about being in that physical place; for still others, it might be about participating in the formality of a properly corporate act of Holy Communion again. All of these are much missed. And our ancient churches have long been significant places of prayer, symbolic of Christian faith and the presence of God in our villages. They are rightly much loved.