April 2004

Nailsworth (CC) = meet at Christ Church

* = joint service with Christ Church members

The Annual Parish Church Meeting will be on Monday 5 April at 7.30 pm in the Village Hall. All parishioners are invited to join this meeting.

Dear Friends,

Our three magazine editors at Nailsworth, Horsley and Kingscote all do a wonderful job and each magazine is improving and each, in their different ways , can be called ‘a good read’. But they are not helped by the vicar who always struggles to get his copy in by the deadline - and this is not because it is not important, but there is always so much to do !

There are some things that you can always count on. As I gaze out of my study window, seeking inspiration, the sky is grey and the trees are bare but by the time you read this, I am sure that if you glance out of your windows you will see that the miracle which we call Spring has happened again ! New life as trees burst into leaf, plants put a spurt on and the birds start nesting !

New life should be occupying our minds in this Easter season as we contemplate afresh the agonies that our Lord Jesus Christ suffered for us as he hung on the Cross. There has been much written about the gratuitous violence shown on the Mel Gibson film The Passion of Christ - I have not seen it yet and might decide not to, but am in no doubt that Jesus suffered agonies before and during his awful death.

Whatever else you may have to do in your life, this is important. Please make sure you get your priorities right and claim the rights Jesus won for you. May I wish you all a joyful Easter, and please make an effort to go to church at Easter and join in that joyful response:

In order to let all the communities in our united benefice celebrate Easter in their own churches, our services during April do not follow the normal pattern. Please check the Service Calendar opposite carefully.

On Sunday 25th April at 10.00 am Roy Kirby and his Paragon Jazz band will play during a service of songs and praise at Nailsworth Church. All welcome !

There will be no Sunday Club in April, due to Easter holidays. However we hope that children will be involved in our Palm Sunday procession which precedes the Family Service on 4th April. The procession will start from the Village Hall at 10.45am weather permitting. Children who would like a reading, music or drama part in the procession please contact Elin on Tel. (see paper copy of Forerunner)

The next session will be on Wednesday 21 April at our usual time of 2.30 pm.

Vida Sutton

The House Group

The total amount received from Boxholder donations this year has amounted to £133.63. Thank you all for your continued support.

On Friday 23rd April (St George’s day) we will all aspire to wear a red rose and take ourselves off to the Abbey House Gardens at Malmesbury, where we hope to see a wonderful display of tulips. Following that we will lunch out and drink a toast to St George. Hopefully we will not encounter any dragons.

We will meet at 10.30 am at the Village Hall, travelling arrangements having been made between members.

For several years we have been using the altar which came from the Newington Bagpath Church in the chancel at Kingscote, because it is lower and does not conceal so much of the rather beautiful wall painting behind it. The original Kingscote altar, which comprises a heavily modified table standing on a wooden platform, has been positioned in the north transept.

A side complication in this is that the fine set of altar cloths which belong to Kingscote do not presently fit the smaller Newington Bagpath altar, so that they have not been used in the chancel.

After many discussions the PCC has decided to ‘decommission’ the Kingscote altar and use it simply as a table in the north transept. The timber platform, which does not have any historical or aesthetic value, will be disposed of. We hope that at some future time the lovely altar cloths can be modified to fit the smaller altar and brought back into use.

We are informing you of these changes before the event as we are very conscious that it is as much your church as it is ours.

The Mobile Police Station will visit Kingscote between 1.30 and 2.00 pm on Sunday 4th and Wednesday 28th April. Please give them your support.

The Post Office is open on every normal working Tuesday and Thursday :

from 9.00 am to 1.00 pm and from 2.30 pm to 5.30 pm.

The mobile library will be by The Walled Garden from 9.40 am to 9.55 am on Thursdays 1st, 15th and 29th of April.

The boxes will be emptied as follows:

Newington and Bagpath - Tues. 13th and Mon. 26th April.

Kingscote - Wed. 14th and Tues. 27th April.

Any material which may be of interest for the next issue of the Forerunner should be sent by 20th April to H. Tubbs, 3 The Walled Garden, Tel. 860 194, e-mail: 

Care of the sick, and the vocation of medicine and healing, are primary Christian duties. When Christ himself sent out his first disciples they were charged with declaring the good news of eternal salvation and with a ministry of healing.

Jesus explicitly denied that sickness was inflicted as a punishment of sin, or indicated some moral fault in the victim; instead he pointed to healing as an occasion for eliciting virtue, as an indication that human sympathy had the capability of transcending self-interest.

God called humans to share with him in the creative processes - it is their highest calling in fact and their most solemn responsibility. They were not placed in the world to be passive subjects of the nature of the Creation but to show the genius God had given to them in being themselves creative with the cosmic realities. In this, of course, there were enormous responsibilities and the chance of horrific error.

As humanity advances, at seemingly rapidly increasing acceleration, to ever more radical interventions in the creative processes, the risks increase. Unfortunately for humanity, however, the advances of the present time are taking place simultaneously with the collapse, at least in western liberal societies, of agreed and general adhesion to religious or philosophical systems.

Christians are called to be prophetic about medical advances, above all others, precisely because change here involves the very nature of life itself. Modern expertise enables all kinds of manipulations of living stuff with, apparently, the only limit being set by what is perceived to enhance what humans themselves, at this moment of their development, suppose to be in their best interests. Most of the changes they are introducing however are likely to prove irreversible.

A calculated search for happiness is not a sound basis for rearranging the materials of the Creation. Christians should be greatly concerned to see that philosophical considerations precede technical ones; to sort out the purpose of life, as revealed through traditions of human understanding of the divine will, before attending to the crude call of this generation for the mere relief of various afflictions. The lengthening of human life does not even bring happiness if the extra years are as barren as those which preceded them.