Dear Friends

The summer has passed all too quickly, the evenings have become longer and there is a chill in the air. Autumn is with us again. With the Feast of Holy Cross comes the start up of another year of Church Festivals, Fasts and activities.

The Wednesday Eucharist begins this evening. The regular meetings of Bible Study (begins Oct. 6^th), Confirmation Class (begins Oct. 13^th), Sunday School (begins Sept. 25^th), and Youth Group (begins Oct. 18^th) all begin soon. The regular meetings of the various church committees and organizations also begin. Please check the years schedule to find out when they occur.

On September the 29^th, The Feast of St Michael and All Angels, the Deanery ACW will be hosted by the Rawdon ACW. There will be Mass at 10:30 in the church followed by a meditation on the church stained glass windows. There will be a lunch in the hall after the Deanery ACW meeting.

Sunday school registration is on the 18^th of September. The autumn term of the Sunday School will run from September 25^th until December 11^th. There will be an All Saints party on November 6^th and the Christmas party is on the 11^th of December.

The Blessing of Pets for the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi will be on Saturday the 1^st of October this year. The Thanksgiving dinner will be the Saturday evening, October 8^th, before Thanksgiving Sunday. Please get your tickets from the usual sources.

On the 23^rd of October the Stewardship Committee and the Pastoral Care Committee have arranged for a lunch workshop after the Planned Giving Service. It is called ‘Preparing for the Future”. You will find an invitation with this mailing. This workshop is intended as a service to the entire community and all are welcome to attend. Many people intend to deal with putting their affairs in order but because many people do not like to think of the end they put it off. This, unfortunately, leaves many problems for your loved ones. This workshop will help introduce people to making a will, making a living will, preparing their own funeral and making sure that they leave bequests in the simplest and best way. We hope many people will appreciate this community service and take advantage of the workshop. The lunch will be a potluck lunch.

On All Saints Sunday this year we will, weather permitting, have an All Souls Blessing of the cemetery at the very end of the service. This will involve a walk around the cemetery border as well as the blessing of individual graves.

On the 20^th of November we will celebrate our Patronal Festival when we will be 184 years old. The new Bishop, the Right Reverend Barry Clarke, will be visiting the parish for the first time and will confirm teenagers from the parish and give the Bishops Award to a faithful member of the parish for years of dedicated service. The Bishop will also dedicate the new festal hangings that were donated to the church this summer. There will be a festive lunch after the service in the church hall. There will be plenty of opportunities for you to meet the new Bishop. Please try and be in attendance and think about bringing a friend to this special service.

The Advent Carol service will be at 7pm on Sunday the 27^th of November.

You will also find with this letter a letter from the Flower Guild of Christ Church. I hope that people will respond to this new initiative and that memorial flowers will be dedicated on all available Sundays.

You will find the years Calendar and Schedule included with this mailing. I remind you that this is a tool for your own planning of the year. Some people seem to have mistakenly formed the idea that the Calendar and Schedule is what is expected of every member of the parish. I need not point out that this is untrue and unrealistic. As I explained last year, this is simply a reference tool for you to use when planning your week and year as well as a tool of accountability.

Two new services have been introduced this year. There will be a service of healing and the laying on of hands three times in the coming year (Saturday November 5^th, February 25^th and June 3^rd). Many parishes have regular services of healing to pray for the ill and to help people live with pain, both mental and physical. There will be a workshop on the 25^th of February to introduce this service and explain its history and the service as found in the Book of Alternative Services.

There will also be an occasional service of Sung Compline and Christian contemplative prayer or meditation. Compline is the last service of prayer for the day and is short and contemplative. This short service will be followed by a brief introduction to different forms of Christian meditation and then the practice of them. They will be held at 7pm on the first Friday evenings of every other month beginning in December: December 2^nd, February 3^rd, April 7^th and June 2^nd. On Saturday April the 8^th there will be a workshop introducing Christian contemplative prayer and meditation. A number of youth in the parish have shown interest in this service and it is partially to cater to them that the service has been introduced. It is also possible that a number of other people that are not normally  attracted to our Church might be interested in this type of service. The services will be very much in the style of the Taize community. The Taize community was very much in the news recently with the tragic death of Br Roger, the community’s founder. The simple meditative services he and his community offered drew youth from all over the world to their small French monastery and their influence has been felt in all corners of the worldwide church.

There will be two other Saturday workshops offered this coming year. In May we will look at ways of praying with the Prayer Book and the Bible and in June we will look at the practice of keeping a Rule of Life (as suggested by the Book of Common Prayer), spiritual direction and the practice of going on retreat. The church will have a parish retreat at the end of June that I hope five or six people will participate in.

I have introduced a new ministry this year. We will now have one Welcomer on the door on Sunday mornings. This person’s sole job is to welcome visitors and guests to our church and to make them feel welcome. This will sometimes mean sitting with them, making sure they have a service card to follow the service without a book, giving them a history of the parish or Anglicanism, or getting them a cup of coffee after the service. The Welcomers will keep track of those who visit and will keep as list of new people from our community that show an interest in our activities. The Ushers seem to have too much to do on a Sunday to be able to effectively look after our visitors and guests. I mentioned this possibility when I addressed the importance of welcoming in this years Rector’s Charge.

There is one new activity this year. This is the end of year garden party. Many people were taken with the Rectory party held on Ascension Sunday two years ago for the First Communion class as well as with the garden party I hosted to celebrate the Baptism of my nephews this spring. Many fondly remembered the Rectory Strawberry Socials of many years ago. We will try having a parish garden party this coming June at the Rectory to celebrate the end of another eventful church year.

I will end this letter by returning to an observation I made to the parish in my first Rector’s Charge, four years ago this winter. There is still a deep reluctance in the wider community to see the Church’s ministry as positive, healthy, and life giving. Christ said that he came to give us life and life abundantly. Those of us with a spiritual life know that it only by relying on God that we are able to live productive meaningful lives. We give thanksgiving regularly for the grace that has brought us into a caring Christian community. However for many, including many who are just on the fringe of our church community and in some cases members of our immediate family, religion is seen as a dark, dangerous and burdensome thing. I am coming across this perception more and more as I seek to teach and nourish this parish by making all of the Church’s resources of prayer and Sacrament available to everyone. I have even been accused of believing the things the Church teaches. The idea of criticizing a priest for such a thing boggles my mind!  There is also a deep lack of trust in our traditions by many. Although to us it will seem comical, some see us as a kind of cult that brainwashes people, especially our youth. The irony is that the Anglican Church is famous for its high regard for reason and teaching and its insistence that people learn to think for themselves. My friends, there is a troubled and lost world right on our doorstep. Those that most need us regard us as, at best, meaningless, and at worst, dangerous. We need to share our own experience of freedom and love which we have received by God’s grace with those around us who think that we only offer guilt and heavy burdens. If we all witness with integrity we can perhaps shine some light into some of the gloom that surrounds us.

 “Come unto me all you who are weak and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”