Weekly Email w/b 26th September 2022

On Monday night I watched NASA’s DART mission. DART stands for “Double Asteroid Redirection Test”, and the aim was to fire a rocket at an asteroid to see if we could change its trajectory. There was much celebrating as the rocket hit its target 6.8 million miles away! Dr. Elena Adams, part of the Planetary Defence team, replying to a question said, “I think Earthlings should sleep better tonight. Definitely, I will.“

This got me thinking. I don’t know about you, but I can be a worrier, and sleep can elude me as I catastrophise, imagining all kinds of worse case scenarios. Asteroids have not been on my ‘keep me awake at night’ list, but there are plenty of things in the news that do cause me to worry.

For me, however, it won’t be NASA that gives me peace and helps me sleep. I think of the words of the Psalmist, ‘In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me dwell in safety‘ – Psalm 4:8. Whatever worries you may have, cast them upon the LORD, trust and rest in Him, and sleep well tonight.

 

Keith Moore
Pioneer Community Minister

This Sunday sees the first of our usual two weeks as we celebrate all things harvest together. Over both Sundays we are inviting people to bring harvest goods with them, with gifts this year going particularly towards the work of Foodbank Plus here in Shrewsbury. See on Facebook for the list of what they’re running low on, which includes soup, hot dogs, dried spaghetti, tinned lunches, tinned fruit, razers and washing powder.

In the morning services Fi Iddon will be speaking at 9am and 11am at Holy Trinity, as well as at CTK. Peter Madley will be speaking at the evening “Presence” gathering, our monthly communion service at the evening congregation. And a reminder that at Holy Trinity Belle Vue at 9am is our monthly Messy Church. If you – or others you know – would like to come along to Messy from 9am there do please come along.

 

• Pre-school. Our huge thanks to Carol Booles for many, many years of faithful service as pre-school worker. And to her husband Keith for his support alongside her. Over the autumn Cerys is going to continue to oversee our pre-school work, alongside the existing Trinity Tots teams on Mondays (Trinity Centre) and Thursdays (Radbrook).
• Trinity Youth. At this stage and season of family life Craig has asked to reduce his hours as Youth Minister. He will be working all day Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, and will be off duty Wednesdays through to Saturdays. Most aspects of existing youth ministry will continue in terms of Sunday morning Pathfinders and Anon, midweek youth, and our work in Meole Brace school and the Meole estate. I know we will all want to be supporting Craig in this new working pattern, being particularly aware that he won’t be able to respond to emails or phone calls on the days of the week when he is not on duty.
• Messy Church. We now host two Messy Church gatherings each month, meeting at the Trinity Centre (Thursday 6^th October at 4.30pm) and at Belle Vue Church (2^nd October at 9am) We’ve consistently found that Messy Church is one of the easiest way to explore faith for baptism families, “friends of friends”, or those returning to church but not sure where to begin.

We do want to identify the particular challenges of resourcing some of the areas of our work currently. There was a brilliant response to the Messy Church team a few months ago – thank you to all who have rolled up their sleeves and got involved in that! Given the changes in Craig’s role we are particularly aware of the need to build team in supporting our work with young people, with leadership alongside Craig for Monday evening life groups a particular need at the moment. Would you consider getting involved in this or other areas? Please speak to Craig, Cerys, Fi or Phil for more details.