News & Features

Thank you to everyone who supported our Macmillan Coffee Morning in the church on Saturday 27th September. There was a very good selection of cakes and sausage rolls on offer to go with the coffee or tea. The weather was very kind to us and many chose to take their chosen refreshments outside to sit in the sun and take the opportunity for a good chat. We raised a total of £325 on the day all of which has been sent to this worthwhile charity.

We held our next church coffee morning on 18 October and our final session will be on Saturday 29th November between 10am and 12pm. It has been decided that December is busy enough! We are preparing for our ever popular Pie and Pickle Lunch in Old School Hall opposite the church on Saturday 1st November between 12pm and 3pm. The cost is £12.50 for a slice of Savoury pie with a baked potato, coleslaw and pickles followed by a dessert. Tea or coffee included. Children until 12: £5 This is a joint venture with the village hall which has recently had acoustic panels installed, greatly improving the quality of the noise in the hall. With a good selection of pies and desserts on offer you will be most welcome to join us. For further information and tickets contact Margaret Thomas 07851 749373.

As with most of the churches in our two benefices, it is a continual battle to keep our building in good order. It all comes at a cost both financially and in time and effort by a relatively small band of people. We are always grateful for the support people give us in keeping our church open. As the winter months approach it has been decided to start our two evening services earlier at 4.00pm. This will start in November until February. At present we envisage services will revert to 6.00pm from March; but who knows?

With Autumn arriving it can only mean thing for the church, Harvest Festival. We held ours in September giving thanks for all that the land produces. The church was wonderfully decorated and the gifts people generously gave were sent to the Thetford Foodbank. Apparently, the Foodbank is struggling. There is no sign of the need going down, but what has gone down is the giving. So please support your local Foodbank if you can.

We shall be holding our Macmillan Coffee Morning in the church on Saturday 27th September to support this worthy charity. There can be very few people who have not been affected by cancer in one way or another. Many of those people have been grateful for the support the charity has provided them so hopefully we shall have had a good turnout.

Our next church coffee morning will be on Saturday 18 October between 10am and 12pm. Everyone is welcome to join us for some refreshments and a chat. We always hope to have some plants for sale too. You may also wish to put in your diary the date for our everpopular Pie and Pickle Lunch in our village hall: Saturday 1st November between 12pm and 3pm. Cost is £12.50 for a slice of Savory pie with baked potato, coleslaw and pickles followed by a dessert. Tea or coffee included. Children until 12: £5 For further information and tickets contact Margaret Thomas 07851 749373.

We held our first Church Coffee Morning for a very long time in July; thank you to everyone who came to support us. This used to be a regular event but lapsed due to several factors; not least the lack of people to run it. This is part of our attempt to improve the engagement we have with our community. We have several ideas how this could expand into something more than coffee and cake, so we shall see how it develops. Our intention is to hold this coffee morning on the Saturday before the third Sunday each month, so the next one will be on 16 August between 10am and 12pm.

For the same reason we have been opening our church daily since Easter and all appears to be going well.

Both initiatives have been born from questions raised about what functions our church needs to perform today apart from holding services of worship. But like many other rural churches we have to be realistic as to what we can achieve with the resources available. We shall continue to pray and listen.

In September we shall be holding our Harvest Festival, though it is unsure how much this will be a celebration for farmers as it appears to have been a very difficult year with the lack of rain.

April
Easter appears a long time ago now. We don’t have a service in our church over Easter but we did host our evening Ash Wednesday service.

We also hosted the Walsingham Pilgrims overnight in the village hall on the Monday evening of Holy Week. We provided them with a meal which included cake (of course). As usual they held a short, simple but very moving service in our church in the evening together with several people from the Shellrock churches in attendance. Some oil was blessed and we each marked the sign of the cross on the forehead of the person next to us. We even knew the songs.

Our APCM has been held and we now have a churchwarden for the first time in three years. The new Electoral Roll has reduced to single figures but there is hope that with the people we now have on our PCC we can start to make a difference. There is much work to be done!

May
We had our first wedding for a long time in May. It was a jolly affair and sad that we don’t have many more; but that is the way things are at the moment. Maybe we should better market our churches as a desiring place for couples to make their wedding vows!!??

At the end of May we shall start opening our church on a daily basis. This is something we have wanted to do for some time but needed to put in place a few safeguards first. There is always that concern when a church is left open unattended, but someone may need that
quiet place to be at any time, not just for an hour on a Sunday twice each month!

We shall be hosting a combined benefice Service at the end of May. We hope we shall have seen many members of the ‘other’ benefice there to join us in our worship.

The village hall and the church are jointly holding an Open Gardens between 1.00pm and 5.00pm on Sunday 8th June. As well as the gardens, the church will be open, decorated with flowers and holding a Local History display as part of the event. Further details from the Open Gardens website; www.opengardens.co.uk. A Songs of Praise service will be held in the evening to finish the day.