01
Mar 2024
Dear Friends, During Sunday morning worship recently, we heard one of the stories of Jesus as told in the gospel of Mark. Jesus has been preaching in the Synagogue at Capernaum and he comes to the house of his disciples Andrew and Simon. Andrew and Simon tell Jesus about Simon’s mother-in-law who is sick in bed with a fever. Jesus goes to the woman and takes her by the hand and lifts her up. Then she is better. The woman responds to this healing by serving Jesus and the other disciples with......
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25
Sep 2023
Dear Friends It’s hard to believe that Sunday, 1st October will be the last time I will lead worship in our sanctuary as the Minister of Greenbank Parish Church. It has been a privilege to serve as Greenbank’s sixth Minister and to be the first female to do so in the church’s 139-year history. I have spent all of my ministry at Greenbank and saying good-bye is not easy, nor should it be. The past twenty years at Greenbank have been happy ones and very memorable. During this time, it has been......
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22
Apr 2022
Dear Friends, Being able to meet back in the Church building this year has been an amazing blessing, and I am very grateful for the many people both in our congregation and in the wider church who have enabled us to do this so safely. I want to especially take this opportunity to say thank you all to those who have been endeavouring to get the church and its organisations up and running in person again. I know those who have participated have really valued the opportunity to meet again in person.......
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11
Jun 2021
Dear Friends, As we move into the summer, we will be thinking about how we continue to open up our church and invite people who have had hard time over the last eighteen months to find hope and belonging in the Christian family. It is good to see some folk already coming back to worship in person on Sundays. We have also, at long last, been able to have a wedding and baptism in the church. Things are moving forward. At the same time it is too soon to relax. It is......
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01
Apr 2021
Dear Friends In past years we would have gathered together for Holy Week and Easter day services in the church. As this is not entirely possible, our services in the next few weeks will be a combination of Zoom and physical services in the church. I am delighted to say that the young people of JAM will be leading Wednesday’s Holy Week service and on Maundy Thursday everyone is invited to come together, virtually in the church, and on Zoom from home, to remember the events of the upper room on the......
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01
Mar 2021
Dear Friends, While there are no certainties yet, with the roll out of the vaccine programme the possibility of a return to meeting up once again with friends and family seems a little closer. It will probably take a while, but thanks to modern medicines and scientific research progress we now have hope that the restrictions we are currently living with will come to an end. I was tempted to write that we will return to normal but I am sceptical that the old normal can or will be returned to. Looking......
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29
Jan 2021
Dear Friends, I recently came across this photo which was taken last year on Shrove Tuesday at Willamwood High School. It seems like another world right now! Shrove Tuesday marks the day before Lent and this was the last day I was able to go into the school before lockdown. Although the Chaplaincy Team have managed to put together some Zoom presentations for the pupils since then, the photo offers a poignant reminder of what cannot be this Lent. Nothing, whether it is school, work, social, religious, or political lives, has been......
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01
Dec 2020
Dear Friends, When the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between me and all living beings on earth. That is the sign of the promise which I am making to all living beings.” Genesis 9:16-17 In last year’s December Good Neighbour, I wrote about a Rainbow Tree that was going to be created during Advent in our link building. The tree was made from bare branches that had fallen from larger trees in the manse garden. Everyone was invited to hang a rainbow coloured......
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01
Oct 2020
Dear Friends, At the beginning of the lockdown in March when we began Zoom services I thought they might be needed for a few weeks. Six months in, I now realise that the new life and worship we have discovered through our computer screens is going to be with us for some time to come. I think it is fair to say that for the foreseeable future church will continue to be very different to what it was in the past. At the time of writing, we are following Version 7 of......
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01
Sep 2020
Dear Friends, As you know the Kirk Session decided to reopen our church for worship again on 9th August and since that time it has been good to worship alongside some familiar faces in the sanctuary again. Worship is very different to what it used to be, as there is no singing of hymns and reciting the Lord’s Prayer aloud during the service. Despite this it is heart-warming to worship together and to have our organist, Peter, playing music for us whilst others are still joining us on the Zoom......
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