Category: Articles

Sermon:Harvest

Articles, Mission, Sermons, Sustainability

Sermon – St Marys 260921 Harvest
Readings: Joel 2:21-27, Matthew 6:25-33

Have you noticed this wonderful water pump? Restored and renovated by Rob Hemmin to be part of our display today, it represents clean water fr all and enough rain to water our crops; as we explore the theme of water. Our superb flower arranging team have put lots of thought into all of these windowsills to reflect our focus on Eco church: the areas where wild flowers were planted or encouraged to grow, to help our wildlife; the pollution of our seas, oceans and rivers; and the importance of our trees and woodlands.
I want to talk about our own use of water, and to take us beyond ourselves to the Bishops Harvest appeal “Water is Life”.

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Harpenden Child Contact Centre

Articles, Community, Young People

Without the services of Harpenden Child Contact Centre, many separated families would be unable to meet their children after a relationship breakdown.  So local volunteers were delighted to meet Hitchin and Harpenden MP, Bim Afolami, when he dropped in at one of their fortnightly sessions at All Saints’ Church Hall in Harpenden recently.

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COP21 – Repair and Reuse

Articles, Sustainability
Countdown to COP
Sustainable St Albans

Unless they’ve been living under a rock, it can hardly have escaped anyone’s notice that the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 is happening in Glascow in November. Locally, Sustainable St Albans is running a series of blog postings entitled “Countdown to COP” to raise awareness of how we can all do our bit to counter perhaps the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced.

Electricals and electronics constitute the fastest growing waste stream, and the carbon footprint of manufacturing replacements for all those gadgets is horrendous. Surely this isn’t good stewardship of this beautiful planet God has entrusted to us.

In the Sustainable St Albans blog this week, Philip Le Riche (All Saints’) shares his passion for fixing things, so avoiding or delaying throwing them away. You can read all about it on the Sustainable St Albans website, and maybe even get inspired to fix one or two things yourself! Or you can also listen to the interview Philip gave on Radio Verulam.

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Announcing our updated parish website

Admin, Articles, Community, Web links

Our website has been in need of refreshing for some while. This has been tricky for technical reasons, and so a complete replacement is now in place. There are likely to be errors and omissions, but in general we hope you like the feel of it.

In particular, the capacity to include less strategic documents without making the site look cluttered. This is achieved primarily by categorising and tagging pages that cannot otherwise be found through the main menu.

Key to this is the “Search” page. Please explore the categories and tags to be found in that page.

You will find some of these ephemeral documents via the “parish -> articles” menu item. This facility may I hope prove to be a way in which articles that might previously have appeared in the “Link” magazine can be given a home.

We would be very pleased to have constructive feedback, both positive or negative, as the new website in its current form does not represent a static resource, but rather a starting point from which to grow. If you wish to be able to create posts on the website please let us know using that feedback link.

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St. Mary’s Eco-Church

Articles, Community, Mission, Web links

At St Marys we are participating in Eco Church: A Rocha UK’s award scheme for churches in England and Wales who want to demonstrate that the gospel is good news for God’s earth.

Their resources are designed to equip a church to express its care for God’s world in its worship and teaching; in how the church looks after its buildings and land; in how it engages with the local community and in global campaigns, and in the personal lifestyles of its congregation.

We want to be a church which cares for creation as an integral part of loving our neighbours and following God faithfully.

You can find out more about Eco church here:  Eco Church – An A Rocha UK Project

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