Our Church
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Welcome to our website for Holy Cross Church with St Saviours in Uckfield together with St Michael’s at Little Horsted and St Margaret’s at Isfield. Our Churches were formally linked in the 1970’s and work together in faith and fellowship. Having visited our site we hope that you will be encouraged and inspired by what you see here and that you too will want to be part of the Mission of Christ’s Church. |
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July In The Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 2017
Pastoral Letter July 2017
Dear All,
The scene is at an assembly in a local school: Fr. John is dressed as a Pharaoh.....
Fr. John: Do you like making cool stuff?
Kids: Yes!
Fr. John: Do you like games?
Kids: Yes!
Fr. John: Do you like stories?
Kids: Yes! (with a scattering of “no”s)
Fr. John: Do you like singing and dancing?
Kids: Yes! (again, with a scattering of “no”s)
Fr. John: Do you love running around and screaming a lot?
Kids: Yes!!!! (no “no’s” at all...)
Fr. John: Then come and join in with our Holiday Club “Pyramid Rock! IT’LL BE BRILLIANT!!!
This will my sales pitch for our children’s Holiday Club “Pyramid Rock” at our local schools. I will be trying to encourage the kids to come along from Monday 24th – Friday 28thJuly, 10.00am – 12.00 noon to Holy Cross Church for games, stories, craftwork and general mayhem with a Christian flavour and message based on the Old Testament story of Joseph. We’ll be decorating the Church with palm trees & Pyramids & will have a Holiday Club Service on Sunday 28th July so you can all see the sort of thing we’ve been doing.
Dear All,
The scene is at an assembly in a local school: Fr. John is dressed as a Pharaoh.....
Fr. John: Do you like making cool stuff?
Kids: Yes!
Fr. John: Do you like games?
Kids: Yes!
Fr. John: Do you like stories?
Kids: Yes! (with a scattering of “no”s)
Fr. John: Do you like singing and dancing?
Kids: Yes! (again, with a scattering of “no”s)
Fr. John: Do you love running around and screaming a lot?
Kids: Yes!!!! (no “no’s” at all...)
Fr. John: Then come and join in with our Holiday Club “Pyramid Rock! IT’LL BE BRILLIANT!!!
This will my sales pitch for our children’s Holiday Club “Pyramid Rock” at our local schools. I will be trying to encourage the kids to come along from Monday 24th – Friday 28thJuly, 10.00am – 12.00 noon to Holy Cross Church for games, stories, craftwork and general mayhem with a Christian flavour and message based on the Old Testament story of Joseph. We’ll be decorating the Church with palm trees & Pyramids & will have a Holiday Club Service on Sunday 28th July so you can all see the sort of thing we’ve been doing.
Curate's Corner July 2017
Curate’s Corner – July 2017
I’ve never been a huge fan of academic work! At school, I always had to work hard to get half-decent grades, and strings of A’s or A+’s were but a distant dream! Some people just have a natural ability to soak up information, make sense of it, and then (and this is the bit I always found the hardest) express it in answers to exam questions. At Agricultural College back in the early ‘90’s, and more recently at Theological College, studying for and then writing essays was always a big challenge for me.
To be honest, it was one of the most daunting aspects of beginning training at College for ordained ministry back in 2012. I wasn’t alone – a number of us struggled with having to go back to school after 20+ years of working life. And when I started my curacy back in June 2014, the studying didn’t stop. For many years, curates have been required to have ongoing academic training during their training, which today is referred to as IME training (Initial Ministerial Education). It is a huge regret to me that the Diocese renamed this training a few years ago, as it was previously known as ‘Post-Ordination Training’ which the witty curates of the time referred to proudly as POTTY training! How appropriate!
As I write this, I have just arrived back from my final residential weekend of IME training, a significant milestone that marks the end of the formal part of my academic training for ministry. It represents the culmination of six taught modules on a variety of subjects from ‘Mission and Ministry’ to ‘Canon Law’ during the course of my curacy. Most challenging for me, it also represents the submission of 31,000 words in 11 essays.
It is, perhaps, one of the very few things about my curacy that I won’t miss! But despite the struggle of the academic work and the essay writing, one aspect of the last three years of IME training will remain very precious indeed to me, and that is the community of fellow curates with whom I was ordained and with whom I have studied. Last weekend, we met together for the last time in the very same place that we met for the first time, then wide-eyed and apprehensive for what our future curacies held. All of us had changed and grown and developed; all of us had experienced things in our curacies that none of us could have imagined.
I’ve never been a huge fan of academic work! At school, I always had to work hard to get half-decent grades, and strings of A’s or A+’s were but a distant dream! Some people just have a natural ability to soak up information, make sense of it, and then (and this is the bit I always found the hardest) express it in answers to exam questions. At Agricultural College back in the early ‘90’s, and more recently at Theological College, studying for and then writing essays was always a big challenge for me.
To be honest, it was one of the most daunting aspects of beginning training at College for ordained ministry back in 2012. I wasn’t alone – a number of us struggled with having to go back to school after 20+ years of working life. And when I started my curacy back in June 2014, the studying didn’t stop. For many years, curates have been required to have ongoing academic training during their training, which today is referred to as IME training (Initial Ministerial Education). It is a huge regret to me that the Diocese renamed this training a few years ago, as it was previously known as ‘Post-Ordination Training’ which the witty curates of the time referred to proudly as POTTY training! How appropriate!
As I write this, I have just arrived back from my final residential weekend of IME training, a significant milestone that marks the end of the formal part of my academic training for ministry. It represents the culmination of six taught modules on a variety of subjects from ‘Mission and Ministry’ to ‘Canon Law’ during the course of my curacy. Most challenging for me, it also represents the submission of 31,000 words in 11 essays.
It is, perhaps, one of the very few things about my curacy that I won’t miss! But despite the struggle of the academic work and the essay writing, one aspect of the last three years of IME training will remain very precious indeed to me, and that is the community of fellow curates with whom I was ordained and with whom I have studied. Last weekend, we met together for the last time in the very same place that we met for the first time, then wide-eyed and apprehensive for what our future curacies held. All of us had changed and grown and developed; all of us had experienced things in our curacies that none of us could have imagined.
Nature Notes July 2017
Nature Notes
When it comes to breeding, some birds, like blue tits, have just one brood in a year and others are multi-brooded such as swallows, which mostly feed on flies. Single brooded species are generally constrained by the availability of suitable food to feed their nestlings. In the case of blue tits this is green caterpillars that are most abundant in oak trees. One brood of about ten blue tit nestlings and their two parents require from 700 to 1000 caterpillars every day. These caterpillars are only available from about mid-April to about mid-June. Consequently, British blue tits cannot breed during months outside these three.
Palm Sunday Walk With The Donkey
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| Palm Sunday Walk with the Donkey. Click each image to enlarge. Click here for gallery. All photos by Ron Hill. | |||