The United Reformed Church (URC) is delighted to announce a new date for its 50th Anniversary Service of Thanksgiving and Celebration. The new date is Saturday 15 April 2023 and the Open Church House event at 86 Tavistock Place, WC1H 9RT, will also take place on the same date from 10am-12pm. A few things to note: Tickets […]
Dear Friends, What’s the first sign that Christmas is really on its way? Not the cards and gift-wrap, which have been on sale since August. Not the weather which, as I write, is still unseasonably mild. No; one of the sure signs has to be the launching of the big stores’ Christmas Adverts. These lavish […]
Dear Friends, Less than a month ago, as I’m writing, we marked the funeral of our late Queen Elizabeth II. Whatever your views on the monarchy, it was an impressive occasion: ten days of pomp and pageantry, liturgy and logistics, all meticulously planned and impeccably executed. Alongside all the formal proceedings, and equally impressive, was […]
So here we are, the United Reformed Church! Only we were never meant to reach this milestone. The great hope in creating the URC was that churches would learn how to do the process, how to have the conversations, so the other churches could join in in a great snowball effect. What we actually learnt […]
In May, Jamie and I joined a party of URC people, led by Michael Hopkins, to see the Oberammergau Passion Play. The play was devised as an act of thanksgiving by the village of Oberammergau after they were spared from the Plague in 1633, and has been performed every 10 years since 1680. It was […]
In April, Revd Maggie Hindley spent a month with CPT in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. Maggie’s reports on their work, witnessing to the daily deprivations of the Palestinian people, were circulated by email and on the church notice boards. Maggie also sent us this prayer for Hebron, written by the first foreigner to […]
Dear Friends, Last week, writing for the Ealing magazine, I commented on the warm Spring weather. Today it’s snowing! But we are past the equinox, the clocks have changed, and the evenings are longer and lighter. We have forsythia in the garden, and neighbourhood trees are thick with blossom. When there is so much trouble […]
Pictured: some of the congregation at our 2021 Harvest Festival. We had 2 full tables of produce which went to the Salvation Army in Greenford.
In July this year, I was privileged to be one of the Thames North Synod reps at General Assembly. I found it impressive. Last year, faced with Covid, GA was simply cancelled. A year on, the URC has embraced technology and, with the considerable help of the tech wizards in URC Youth, moved the whole […]
We are now in Holy Week, leading up to Good Friday and Easter. We have two special services, by Zoom, to mark this week. On Maundy Thursday, 1st April, at 7pm, we will follow through the story of Holy Week using readings from Mark’s gospel. When we get to the Last Supper, we shall […]
