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HOLY WEEK SERVICES

Holy Week Services

Service times vary and may be in any of our three churches so please check the time and venue carefully.

Sunday 24th March – Palm Sunday

9.15am – Holy Communion – St Ippolyts Church

11.00am – Parish Praise - St Mary’s Church, Great Wymondley

Monday 25th March

7.00pm – Compline (Night Prayer) – St Mary’s Church, Great Wymondley

Tuesday 26th March

7.00pm – Compline (Night Prayer) – St Mary’s Church, Great Wymondley

Wednesday 27th March

7.00pm – Compline (Night Prayer) – St Mary’s Church, Great Wymondley

Maundy Thursday 28th March

11.00am – Chrism Eucharist – St Albans Cathedral

7.00pm – Holy Communion with Washing of Feet – St Ippolyts Church

Good Friday 29th March

2.00pm – The Way of the Cross – St Ippolyts Church

Easter Eve – Saturday 30th March

9.30am-10.30am – Children’s Easter Workshop – St Ippolyts Church

7.00pm – Little Wymondley Churchyard – Easter Vigil

Sunday 31st March – Easter Day

9.15am – Benefice Holy Communion – St Ippolyts Church

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Lent Lunches

Lent Lunches start this year in the St Ippolyts Parish Hall at 12:45 on 20th February and will be served each week at the same time on each Tuesday until Tuesday 26th March. 

The lunch costing £3 will be the usual delicious soup with roll and butter followed by tea or coffee.

Do come along and join us everyone welcome!

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Ash Wednesday - Service 19:00hrs St Ippolyts Church.

ASH WEDNESDAY

 

14th February 2024

7.00pm

Ash Wednesday marks the start of the church’s season of Lent.

Lent is a time when Christians refocus their hearts and minds on God and try to set aside the things that prevent us from living our lives in the way God intended us to.

Would you like to refocus? 

Join us at St Ippolyts Church on Wednesday 14th February at 7pm for a service of Holy Communion with the Imposition of Ashes.

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ST IPPOLYTS CHURCH ‘100' CLUB

 

January numbers, winners, and prizes 

1st Prize      No 22        Frank Harding   £20

2nd Prize     No 10        Irene Isaac          £15

3rd Prize     No 79        Gary Hill            £10

The '100' Club was formed to raise funds for the care, maintenance, and improvement of the Parish Church. Members pay £10 each year for a numbered ticket and every number is entered in a draw on the first Sunday of every month after the 9.15am service. Cash prizes are won.

New members are always welcome. Details from Jane Veasey 

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 01462 434254 

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ST IPPOLYTS CHURCH FLOODLIGHTING SPONSORSHIP

St Ippolyts church installed the floodlights for the Millennium celebrations 23 years ago with the aid of a grant from the Floodlighting Trust.  They were first illuminated on Christmas Eve 1999, and they have been used every night since.  We now have mainly LED replacement lights that are more reliable, have better colour control and are cheaper to run. We have recently had to renew the two spotlights on the top of the tower that illuminate the cross with LEDs so we are now 100% LED floodlit.

With the current electricity costs the annual sponsorship needs to be £20 per week, we hope this will be enough and we have 52 weeks to fill.  You may sponsor as many weeks as you wish and you may wish this to be in memory of a loved one, to celebrate a birthday, a wedding, or anniversary etc.

The list giving the 52 weeks is normally at the back of church so please sign up early if you want a particular week.

Please pay by BACS if possible, to 

St Ippolyts Church Finance Fund

Sort Code 20-41-12 

Account Number 00522899 

please ref Floodlighting.

Otherwise Cash, or Cheques made payable to ‘St Ippolyts Church’.

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LENT LUNCHES

"Lent Lunches 2021 - St John the Evangelist, Shirley" >You are welcome to join us for Lent Lunches that will be held in the Parish Hall every Tuesday lunch time with the doors opening at 12.00 pm from Tuesday 20th February to Tuesday 26th March. There is a choice of a selection of three homemade soups which are served from 12.45 pm at £3.00 per serving and this includes fresh bread, butter or spread and a mug of coffee or tea. A donation is requested for any second helpings. The money taken for Lent Lunches will go towards Motor Neurone Disorder Society and USPG an Anglican Missionary Agency.

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DECORATING ST IPPOLYTS CHURCH FOR EASTER

DECORATING ST IPPOLYTS CHURCH FOR EASTER

On Saturday 30th March from 9.30 am at St Ippolyts Church all are invited to join Friends and bring flower arrangements and/or flowers in a vase to make the church look welcoming for our Easter Service. Donations are welcome to put towards buying Easter Lilies and this can be put in an envelope and given directly to Jane Veasey, Gosmore House, Newlands Lane, SG4 9BD or placed in an envelope titled 'Easter Lilies' and put at the back of St Ippolyts Church. 

Frances Williams, Carol Scott, and Joan Pinkstone

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COMMUNITY COFFEE MORNING

Friends' Coffee Morning is a lovely time for local friends and sometimes their families who are coming for a monthly catch up together enjoying refreshments and we are grateful for the variety of cake contributions and selection of biscuits too. All are welcome to join us and share some time together - particularly during these cold winter months. Our Next Community Coffee Morning is Wednesday 7th February 10.30 am till Noon at the Parish Hall.

A thank you to Carl Watson for helping us each month with opening the Hall and with all our setting up and clearing away at the end. 

Frances Williams, Carol Scott, and Joan Pinkstone

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LENT STUDY COURSE

LENT STUDY COURSE – A Way Through the Wilderness by Paula Gooder When faced with times of crisis or challenge, many people turn to self-help for support. But what about Christians – how can we find strength not merely in self-help but in God’s help? ‘A Way through the Wilderness’ is a five-session course which explores God’s promise to comfort his people as they struggle through life’s wildernesses. Canon Dr Paula Gooder is a writer and lecturer in Biblical Studies. Her passion is to ignite people’s enthusiasm for reading the Bible today, by presenting the best of biblical scholarship in an accessible and interesting way. She is currently the Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral. Beginning on Wednesday 21st February at 7pm – venue to be confirmed. The course should last no more than 90 minutes (including tea/coffee) and will be led by Reverend Ginni and Reverend Tricia.

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A thought from Revd Paul!

Some years ago I was visiting a North African town sixty miles from Alexandria called El Alamein. Judy's father had fought in the battle in 1943 and we were able to visit the place. We went round the museum then paid our respects to those who lie in the huge cemetery nearby. When it was over, I stood beside the road and looked out across the desert beyond it. It was burning hot and utterly desolate, stretching hundreds of miles beyond the horizon. It occurred to me that it might have been like that when we read of Our Lord going into the wilderness to be tempted for forty days and forty nights by the devil. I have never visited the Holy Land and I do not want to because I prefer to hold the Bible story in my mind rather than seeing what it is really like now. But looking towards that desert brought this incident very close to mind.

This season of Lent which we associate with Christ in the wilderness begins with Ash Wednesday on February 14; it continues for the rest of the month and throughout March. I wonder what really happened in the wilderness. Jesus knew He had to perform His ministry; there was this inner compulsion that He could not resist. The question was HOW? I wonder if we could think of the temptation in the context of going into a quiet place to think things out rather than meeting a physical tempter. He had to prepare Himself spiritually for the task that lay ahead. But He was practical; He had to plan ahead. So, l envisage Him going into this lonely place to meditate.

The temptations took the form of what the psychiatrists call 'intrusive thoughts'. He is hungry and round stones look like bread rolls; He could change stones into bread and feed the hungry, getting a popular following who He could then teach. He sees a distant village with its huge synagogue; if He jumps from the top, He can float to the ground protected by the angels, thus getting a crowd because people love the sensational – again He can teach them. Finally, there is the ultimate temptation, that of compromise. Lower His sights a bit, connive with the Establishment, have lower standards, play safe. The temptations in the wilderness are therefore rooted in doing the wrong thing for the right reason. They need not involve actually appearances with a devil, but they are just as real.

Perhaps this may be a different way of looking at a much loved Gospel story in a different way, but if so, that is me (once again!) thinking outside the box and challenging the orthodox. If so, it may help us to take a different attitude to Lent. For just as Our Lord needed to go into the wilderness so we need our own periods of quiet to ponder; and just as Christ often withdrew for meditation so we need similar times just to think. Not necessarily formally but pausing for short times. Thinking about such things as spiritual priorities – or how we might deepen our awareness of God – or whether our spiritual discipline can be deepened – or in any number of other things. Silence can be the most life affirming thing, the most intense experience. 'What is life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare?' wrote the poet W.H. Davies. What indeed? 

So, my mind goes back to another very different wilderness, high above Buttermere in the Lake District fifty years ago, on the Sunday after Easter. Brilliant sunshine, total silence, and one of the most glorious views in England. God had never been closer than He was that day. We need our wildernesses; we need our wilderness experiences. We need to let God into our busy lives – and be still with Him.

With my love,

Paul   

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Christingle Service

Well done to our Curate, Tricia, for getting into the spirit of the Christingle Service today!!

IMG 5844IMG 5845

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CHRISTINGLE SERVICE

We will be having our church Christingle Service in aid of The Children’s Society on Sunday 7th January at 9.15am, followed by breakfast. All are welcome. 

Jenny Sheach

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QUIZ NIGHT THANK YOU!

QUIZ NIGHT THANK YOU! 

Another successful Quiz Night where a grand total of over £1500 was raised to support St Ippolyts church.  This money will help to pay for the new path which has been constructed to create a safer way to the refurbished disabled friendly toilet. The organisers wish to thank everyone who helped on or before the evening and all the wonderful quizzers who turned up to support and enjoy the evening.

Church fund raising committee.

Special thanks to Mary, Jane, Michael Louis, Barbara and Andy for all you did! 

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Crib Festival

A big thank you to everyone who helped to make this years crib festival so successful raising over £1700 for our church. Special thanks to Barbara Thomas who orchestrated the event and to Mary and Jane for all they did. Finally thank you to everyone who came and supported our event without you we would not be able to raise so much money.

Look in our gallery for photos! 

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CAROL SINGING

CAROL SINGING 

Love singing carols? We will be carol singing around the Broadmeadow Estate on Friday 22nd December, starting from 1 Ash Drive at 6.15. Everyone is welcome to join us, we are just a group of people who enjoy singing the carols, not a choir, so you don’t have to have the most perfect singing voice! Non singers are very welcome too (we need people to knock on doors!). All participants are invited to end the evening with a glass of mulled wine, a mince pie, and a jolly good natter. Proceeds are in aid of Breast Cancer now in memory of one of our stalwart singers Caroline Swindells.

Barbara Thomas

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DECORATING ST IPPOLYTS CHURCH FOR CHRISTMAS

DECORATING ST IPPOLYTS CHURCH FOR CHRISTMAS

St Ippolyts Church will be decorated for Christmas on Saturday 23rd December from 9.30am. The colour theme this year is silver, white with greenery and ivy and holly is always welcome too. There will be white candles and Frances Williams has kindly offered a Christmas tree for the Lady Chapel. Anyone in our local community is invited to help decorate St Ippolyts Church together with Friends and we look forward to seeing you.

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A thought from Revd Paul Lanham

Dear Friends,

'Peace on earth, good will to all men' – the message of the angels to the shepherds as they watched their flocks by night. Writing this in mid-November my eyes were drawn to a newspaper that said that there will be no Christmas tree or decorative lights in Manger Square in Bethlehem, the place which traditionally marks the place where Christ was born. The reason, according to the municipality is that this is 'in honour of the martyrs and in solidarity with our people in Gaza'.

 It's one of the saddest articles I have read. We may have different thoughts on the terrible tragedy that is Gaza. But the thought of the birth of Christ being associated with hatred and division is scarcely bearable. As 2023 ends and 2024 dawns the message of the angels has never been more pressing than it is at this time. God as man came to this earth as a figure of peace and unity. He came to draw everyone to Himself, and the symbolic place associated with His birth mocks that peace in the hatred felt by people there. And yet it sums up the world as a whole. For there is so much hatred and division in the world. It is particularly poignant that in this place of all places there should be such bitterness and division. But the icy tentacles of division reach out beyond Bethlehem. Gaza has driven the problems in the Ukraine more into the background for example but it is a running sore, and as with Gaza there seems no end in sight and peace (as I write) seems far far away, with all its violence and suffering.

Beyond it there is more hatred and mistrust. The re-emergence of anti-Semitism has been a by-product of the crisis in Gaza, and this is a stain on our country. So is racialism. Elsewhere there are areas of the world where there is little peace, even if it is seen as mistrust between nations and factions. If Christmas and the New Year is to be more than the chance for a bit of sentimentality and a bout of attempted gastronomic suicide, then it must represent a conscious working towards that peace and unity which the Babe of Bethlehem came to bring. And if you say that individuals cannot achieve anything, then large amounts of water can only come from many individual drops coming together to become a flood. 

Christ came to be the Prince of Peace. He also came as the personification of love and healing. Christmas is a symbol of that most basic form of love, a mother for her child. Mary represents love in its fullest form; without it Christmas just becomes a sentimental extravaganza. The Christ who is the symbol of love being received becomes the Christ who is the personification of love reaching out. Love for the world, but also love of each individual on earth. In love Christ comes down to earth. He is love incarnate. 

So love and peace together lie at the heart of Christmas in all its many aspects. The Prince of Peace is the Giver of Love. May these be God's gift to you at this Christmas time. May it also be a task for the coming year, to channel peace and love to others, a resolution for the New Year.

Sadly I cannot be with you again in the parish this season as I have promised to minister elsewhere. We as a family are then getting together for 24 hours as a family, with the seven sadly now only six. So, Jo and Liz my daughters, Paul my son in law, and Katy and Emily my grand daughters and I wish you personally every blessing for Christmas and very best wishes for 2024.

Paul

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ST IPPOLYTS CHURCH FLOODLIGHTING SPONSORSHIP – 2024

ST IPPOLYTS CHURCH FLOODLIGHTING SPONSORSHIP – 2024

St Ippolyts church installed the floodlights for the Millennium celebrations 23 years ago with the aid of a grant from the Floodlighting Trust.  They were first illuminated on Christmas Eve 1999, and they have been used every night since.  We now have mainly LED replacement lights that are more reliable, have better colour control and are cheaper to run. We have recently had to renew the two spotlights on the top of the tower that illuminate the cross with LEDs so we are now 100% LED floodlit.

With the current electricity costs the annual sponsorship needs to be £20 per week, we hope this will be enough and we have 52 weeks to fill.  You may sponsor as many weeks as you wish and you may wish this to be in memory of a loved one, to celebrate a birthday, a wedding, or anniversary etc.

The list giving the 52 weeks is normally at the back of church so please sign up early if you want a  particular week.

Please pay by BACS if possible to

St Ippolyts Church Finance Fund

Sort Code  20-41-12 

Account Number  00522899 

please ref Floodlighting .

 

Otherwise Cash or Cheques  made payable to ‘St Ippolyts Church’.

 

Roger Cox Tel: 01462 432445  Email  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  

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ST IPPOLYTS CHURCH NATIVITY CRIB FESTIVAL 2nd & 3rd DECEMBER, 11am – 5pm

ST IPPOLYTS CHURCH NATIVITY CRIB FESTIVAL 2nd & 3rd  DECEMBER, 11am – 5pm

231202 Nativity crib festival poster

For lots of people the Crib Festival is a very special start to the Christmas season, it really is a unique experience. As one of last year’s visitors said “I don’t know what I was expecting, but we were blown away by the whole setup. So many cribs and very well displayed. We had a lovely time looking at them all. Such a variety and great to read some of their back stories. We had a lovely time, and the tea and cakes were great too.”

The variety of the cribs need to be seen to be believed, 260 cribs last year and hardly a duplicate! They are made from an unbelievable array of materials – nescafe pods or banana leaves to name a couple and they come from all around the world from as far away as New Zealand and Alaska. However, what makes them so special are their “stories” about what makes them so important to the families that own them.

After wandering around and taking in the fantastic display some refreshments will be in order and we have our mini café serving hot drinks and fabulous, homemade cakes. You could also dress up as a “living crib” and take a photo for your Christmas cards! Entry is £4 but children are free.

Can you help?

Do you have a crib we could borrow for the weekend? If so, please contact Barbara.

Could you bake a cake? There are sign-up sheets at the back of the church (or contact Barbara) – due to lack of space we ask for specific cakes and it would be wonderful if we managed to get equal quantities of each variety! 

Could you spare a couple of hours to help man the event? There are sign-up sheets for this too or contact Barbara.

For more information please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 07443228468

You can see photos of previous years on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/nativitycribfestival

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COMMUNITY COFFEE MORNING

COMMUNITY COFFEE MORNING 

Our previous Coffee Morning was once again a lovely sharing time with 20 friends who joined together in the Parish Hall Committee Room. We enjoyed chatting with each and this was helped with a selection of cakes, biscuits, and some fresh warm cheese scones too. If you would like a lift to a coffee morning, please let Joan Pinkstone know 01462 457660.


Our next Coffee Morning is Wednesday 1st November 10.30 am until Noon. We look forward to seeing you.

Frances Williams Carol Scott Joan Pinkstone

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