Parish of Bishopstoke

Talk from this year's Christmas Midnight Communion It’s Christmas Eve! But you discover the organ’s broken! To be precise, the bellows have been nibbled by mice... What do you do? How can you sing the carols? You nip down to a friend who plays the guitar and ask him to write something that works just with a guitar. And he comes up with a ditty – and with only three chords... That’s how Silent Night came into the world in an Austrian village – so the story goes. It did h

Dear Friends We seem to be moving swiftly through Advent. Soon it will be Christmas and, before we know it, the New Year. What will 2019 bring? A few weeks ago in our services we were reading some of Jesus’ words from Mark 13: ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines.’ These words are just part of a very troubling passage, which begins with a prediction of the destruction of the temple and goes

Thank you so much to everyone who came to our 41st Anniversary service on 24th October. We had a wonderful afternoon. Thank you to Richard for his prayers for us and for playing the keyboard. Thank you to Revd Jono Harvey for his amazing talk and for chatting to us all over tea. Thank you to every single member of PHF who played their part so well, including providing the refreshments afterwards. Ethel Scivier, or Eff as I knew her, would be so thrilled that something sh

Our Saturday morning cafés during 2018 raised a total of £2712 for the work of the church, including St Mary’s lighting, and various outreach projects. Thank you very much to all the cake makers who contributed such a wonderful selection of cakes. Thank you also to those who donated raffle prizes and items for the tombola. Special thanks to the people who help make the café mornings so successful. The first café of 2019 will be on Saturday 19 January from 10 am – 12.30 pm.

On Sunday 25 November we had a visiting speaker, Trevor Roff, from the charity Open Doors, which supports persecuted Christians in many parts of the world today. Trevor said that in the earliest years of the church, as we read in Acts, there was amazing church growth, but alongside it severe persecution. He said that it was exactly the same today – in some places. When the church grows rapidly, other people become jealous and want to destroy it. In Britain, though, we are

If you would like to give towards the ARK Eastleigh hampers for local families this year, you can either donate online at www.arkeastleigh.co.uk or bring your donation to church. Please place it in an envelope marked ‘ARK Hampers’ in the offering at a service; it can be either in cash or a cheque payable to ‘Bishopstoke PCC’.

“I looked down as I was treading water waiting for the race to start. It was so unfathomably deep and dark. A few times my imagination ran away with me – I panicked, feeling I was the only person in this big, dark sea, the eyes of every sea creature on me, but I kept moving towards the light.” Recently my daughter-in-law represented her country in an international triathlon. Knowing that ocean swimmers have to combat their terror of the dark beneath them, I was interested