Category: Articles

Prayers of Love and Faith for same-sex couples

The Parish of Harpenden (All Saints’, St Mary’s, and St Nicholas’) is pleased to welcome the Prayers of Love and Faith for same-sex couples.  All the clergy in our parish are happy to provide such prayers within a service upon request.  The PCC has unanimously endorsed this decision of the clergy and the use of the newly commended Prayers for Love and Faith.  As a parish we are committed to being an inclusive church, called to be caring, loving and welcoming to all.  Please contact the Parish Office (01582 765524) if we can assist.

Farewell to Dennis

Sunday 9th June 2024 was a marvellous celebration of Dennis’ time as our Rector.  The Parish came together to create a memorable send-off and so many people came and contributed to the special day.  It was a fitting tribute to Dennis’ wonderful leadership with us. The morning joint All-Parish Service at St. Nicholas’ Church was exceptional, and weaved together so many different styles of worship. The Church was full, the volume high and the warmth palpable. The afternoon Farewell Tea Party was very well attended, with cream teas, cakes, tea, music, crafts and presentations of cards, gifts and many warm words of thanks to Dennis and Helen.

Planting a dead hedge

Having taken advice from local experts, Alex Melson and Tim Hill, as part of St Mary’s Eco Church initiative, a dead hedge has been started next to the wild flower area and the bug church. Rustic Sweet Chestnut stakes were kindly donated by the Tarmac company for this purpose.

Dead hedges are piles of branches and twigs arranged to form a barrier. They provide hiding places and nesting habitats for all sorts of creatures, as well as food for insects. As the hedge rots down, the nutrients are recycled back into the earth below, meaning garden ‘waste’ needn’t go into garden bins or bonfires.

Our Parish now Supports Azalea

Azalea means beautiful and dignified in ancient Greek and its mission is to empower and facilitate sustainable transformation in the lives of the men, women and neighbourhoods impacted by sex trafficking through several different projects. Sex trafficking is when an individual is coerced, forced, or manipulated into providing sexual access or services to a ‘punter’ often through threats of, or acts of, violence from a perpetrator.  So what work does Azalea do?

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St Mary’s Bug Church

St Marys bug church was filled up with twigs, leaves and other materials at our outdoor Simply Worship service. We found some caterpillars, and moved one into the bug church complete with his favourite leaves!

We added the Please and Thank you prayers to the prayer board in church. We are proud to have received our Eco Church silver award.

Thanks from Arrata

Dear friends, the team at Aratta, and all those they support, in Chernihiv and Chernihiv Oblast in the North of Ukraine, would like to send you their most grateful and sincere thanks for your donations. We are currently distributing the aid, sent via Tony and Philip at British Humanitarian Aid, to those with the greatest needs; over 80 yrs, severely handicapped, displaced persons and those with damaged homes are all included. The queues are starting to form at 8am, though we only open at 10am. Many are desperate for help as there is little or no state support available.

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British Humanitarian Aid  Collection

Thank you to everyone who gave donations to BHA at our recent  weekend collections . We had a fantastic response this time, from many members and organisations within our Town, and we collected more items than we could be load into one van; hence a return collection is being organised to fetch the additional items.

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British Humanitarian Aid Collection

Chernihiv in the Ukraine – TOGETHER WE CAN HELP

There will be a collection on: Saturday 25th February from 10 am to 3 pm
In the Cunningham Room in St Nicholas Church Halls
Our gifts will be collected by BHA on Sunday 26TH February
For further information please contact: Anne Harper or
Margaret Hewitt via the office.

( The Flier for this event may be found here flier)


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