Advent Calendars have become a familiar feature of Christmas anticipation. Beginning on December 1st (usually before Advent) and ending on Christmas Eve, I can remember when they were filled with different religious images and pictures, rather than chocolates. The idea is to mark each day as special on the countdown to Christmas…
To read the rest, see Christmas Pastoral Letter 2018
Fr Geoff Graham was awarded his Bachelor of Theology degree in a ceremony held at St Paul’s Cathedral in Nicosia.
I suppose the most basic harvest question of all is: was it worth it? It’s a question that is usually related to investment and choices. Did I sow the right crops, invest in the right soil nutrients, weedkillers, machinery, labour resources; did I buy the right quality of seed? Harvest is a time for reckoning….
To read the rest, see Harvest Pastoral Letter 2017
Last year at our Christmas Carol service in Pervolia, one participant wanted to signal her dissatisfaction. She had expected to come to community Christmas Carols, she said, not something that looked a bit more like a church service with prayers and readings. ….
To read the rest, see Christmas Pastoral Letter 2016
I wonder what Amnesty International would make of the trial of Jesus , if it were to be held nowadays. Perhaps ‘trial’ is too grand a word to use, actually, for a process that seems to have had no proper provision for advocacy, no rules of evidence and no independent judiciary, and in which, all too obviously, each of the frightened accusing parties is desperate to preserve their own interest….
To read the rest, see Easter Pastoral Letter 2016
The Diocesan theme for 2015 was stewardship, and that has loomed large in our Council thinking. There has been fresh thinking about how we best support planned and realistic giving. Also we have rationalised our fund-raising events and opened a second Charity Shop. All of this has led to our first year of financial surplus for several years, and we are anxious to maintain momentum…
To read the full report, see St Helena’s Synod report 2016
Two comments following the Paris bomb atrocities have stuck in my memory. The first, from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was widely publicised in the UK media. Very publicly, he shared his doubts. He wondered aloud where God was in all this…
To read the rest, see Christmas Pastoral Letter 2015
We celebrated one of our congregation’s 90th birthday on a warm Sunday in July by presenting a cake to Elizabeth Chiinery.
It was a very happy occasion.
Geoff Graham, formerly Lay Reader at St Helena’s was ordained as a Deacon in St Paul’s Cathedral on Saturday June 27th.
At the same service, Chris Goldsmith from St Barnabas’, Limassol was also ordained and Bill Grundy from St Andrew’s, Kyrenia was licensed as a Reader.
This year we shall once again hold a service of Stations of the Cross on Good Friday afternoon. When we first reintroduced that three years ago I think it is true to say that there was a degree of suspicion about whether we were doing something that was non-Anglican and strange. But the service has been popular on each of the occasions we have used it, and although there is opportunity for people to come and go throughout the hour and a half or so of the service, very few take it….
To read the full letter, see Easter pastoral letter 2015
