Notices 5th November

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Morning Service

10:30am
Church Anniversary Service
led by David Battye
incl. Crèche / Junior Church

Evening Service

6:15pm
Evening Service
led by Marjorie Cockburn

'Let us have warm affection for one another as family.'

Romans 12 v.10

Shoe-boxes. The ‘knit and chatters’ are selling hats, scarves and mittens for your shoeboxes from this Sunday onwards. Thank you. Enid.

Coffee Morning with Christmas Stalls will be on 9th November 10:00am-12:00noon at Victoria Hall, Norfolk Street, Sheffield S1 2JB hosted by The Methodist Women in Britain. Proceeds for World Mission.

Circuit Welcome Service and Accreditation of a Local Preacher. Gleadless Methodist Church is hosting a service to welcome Melissa Quinn and Jonathan Buckley, as well as accredit Simon Etty as a local preacher on Thursday 9th November at 7:00pm.

Crane Moor Methodist Church Autumn Fayre will be held on Saturday 11th November 10:00am-12:00noon. Please come and enjoy a coffee and bacon buttie and the usual cake stall, tombola and gifts etc.

Christmas Fayre on Saturday 26th November, in the church hall, at Wisewood. If you have anything suitable for the stalls, please bring them to church. If you can bring them before the day, it will be easier to sort them. Thanks. Sue Ru.

Tea towels If you have taken any tea towels home to wash or dry, will you please return them, as we are running short.

Circuit news. I am writing to inform churches that following a review of the circuit bulletin and feedback from users, we have decided the best use of time and effectiveness of the material. We will, from 1st January 2018, follow two guidelines:
• The Circuit Bulletin will be produced on a fortnightly basis.
• It will advertise Circuit initiated events.
Many local events which are not relevant to the majority of churches in the circuit will not be included and that it would be more effective for local churches to use their own local networks to communicate their normal events. Rev. Mark Goodhand.

Circuit Facebook page. Please visit the Circuit Facebook page and let us know of any suggestions you have about how we can develop it. But don't forget to LIKE it first!

Prayer Book. Please pray for the people mentioned in the prayer book which is on the vestibule desk.

PRAYER COLUMN

We read from John 1 v.1: ’In the beginning was the word and the word was God’ ... v.4 ‘In Him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness but the darkness has not understood it’.

On 25th October 1917, the red guards of the Bolsheviks occupied the government buildings of Petrograd which marked the beginning of the communist era proper.

Within weeks the peoples’ commissarial for enlightenment was established to remove all references to religion from school curriculums.

In the years that followed churches and monasteries were destroyed and turned into public toilets.

Their land and properties were appropriated, thousands of bishops, monks and clergy were systematically murdered by the security services.

Specialist units were set up to round up Christian intellectuals and believers before sending them to camps.

The soviets believed that when the church had been deprived of its power, religion would wither away and die. When this did not happen they redoubled their efforts.

In Stalin’s purges of 1936-7 thousands of clergy and Christians were rounded up and shot. Under Khrushchev it became illegal to teach religion to children.

From 1917 to the perestroika period in the 1980’s, the more religion persisted the more the soviets found ways to eradicate it.

Today the Russian Orthodox churches are packed full. The grip of oppression has been released and the faithful returned to church in their millions. The Soviet experiment manifestly failed. Praise the Lord!

We thanked God for the freedoms we enjoy and prayed for persecuted Christians who work in very difficult and dangerous situations to take the Good news of Jesus today.

Dorothy.