Redland Park URC News - REDLAND PARK UNITED REFORMED CHURCH

UPROOTED EXHIBITION

15/10/2018

Join us for this moving photographic exhibition featuring stories of those displaced in Nigeria, Kenya and Iraq. The Uprooted exhibition raises awareness of the more than 40 million people displaced inside their own country. Seeking safety but unwilling or unable to cross a border, they are largely ignored by the international community and denied the official protection afforded to refugees. But Christian Aid believes that everybody counts. The exhibition will give you the chance to hear displaced people tell their own stories.

Through a series of powerful images and individual accounts, you will learn more about the global crisis of displacement and how you can speak up for all people on the move.Christian Aid partners are working in communities affected by conflict and climate-related displacement, providing emergency assistance and the chance to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. Through photographs and ID cards you can learn more about people's lives in the midst of displacement and uncertainty. The exhibition will be open to everyone from Sunday 21 October to Sunday 28 October, 12.00-2.00pm, and 5.00-7.00pm Monday to Friday, and 11.00-3.00pm on Saturday, in the church.Find out more at www.caid.org.uk/uprooted

CHURCH OPENING

22/9/2018

You are always welcome in Redland Park Church where our Sunday services are at 10.30am, with communion on the first Sunday of each month. There are also informal services on the first and third Sundays of the month at 7.00pm, and three different cell groups bring another perspective to our worship on Saturday mornings, Monday evenings or Tuesday evenings. Please contact us for further details on any of these meetings.

Our church is also open for prayer or meditation every Wednesday between 12.00 and 2.00pm.

September 16th, 2018

16/9/2018

FUNDRAISING FOR THE VERENGA-MUKOKU CHURCH IN ZIMBABWE

16/9/2018

We are holding another fund-raising evening to support our overseas charity, the Verenga-Mukoku Church in Zimbabwe, the mother church of one of our members. There will be a Zimbabwean choir, and food from Zimbabwe, England, Jamaica, etc. Come along and join us. 6.00pm on Saturday 6 October, £6 adults, £12 family.

CELEBRATING HARVEST

7/9/2018

Redland Park Church will be celebrating our Harvest Festival on Sunday 30 September, after morning service, together with our friends from the Bristol Korean Church, with lunch of soup, dessert and Korean food afterwards. Everyone welcome. Adults £5, children £3, family £10

Food collected at the Harvest service will be donated to the Night Shelter and the Bristol food bank.

HOLIDAY CLUB FOR THIRD AGERS

12/6/2018

The Whiteladies Road Churches will be running a Holiday Club for 3rd Agers (over 50s!) on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from Monday 25 June to Friday 6 July, with activities as diverse as a visit to Wells Cathedral and Palace to breadmaking, making music to sculpting. Contact Rachel Haig, Community Minister on rachelhaig@hotmail.com Tel. 0117 9737747.

GARDEN PARTY ON SATURDAY 16 JUNE 2018

8/6/2018

In aid of our church charities. Please come along and enjoy a beautiful garden, sandwiches, cakes, tea and coffee, and good company - 3.00pm in Westbury-on-Trym. Please email for details.

READINGS AND REFLECTIONS FOR SUNDAY 27 MAY

22/5/2018

ISAIAH 6:1-8. These few verses describe the call of Isaiah to his ministry of speaking for God to Israel during a critical period of its history in the late 8th century BC. Amid the smoke from the sacrifice on the altar in the temple, Isaiah had a vision of God attended by heavenly creatures. One of the heavenly beings touched his lips with a live coal symbolizing his freedom from sin and worthiness to proclaim God’s message to Israel. Then Isaiah heard the voice of God calling for someone to speak for God to God's sinful people; and he responds.

ROMANS 8:12-17. Paul claims that having the Spirit of the risen Christ is the key to Christian discipleship. The Spirit dwelling within us enables us to live as the people of God rather than as slaves to the value system of the world around us.

JOHN 3:1-17. Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, learns from Jesus how the Spirit makes us new spiritual persons through faith in the crucified and risen Christ. This comes about because God loves the world so much that God sent Jesus into the world to save us with this faith. This majestic passage is one of many in the New Testament witnessing to what subsequently became the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It describes the ministry of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit as God at work in the world. Some people look at verse 16 as the secret for obtaining eternal life beyond death. In this passage, however, John makes the point that God is as much concerned about how we live in this life now as with what happens to us afterwards. As the subsequent verses 18 to 21 explain, God's judgement occurs and eternal life begins when we believe who Jesus is and what his coming into the world really means.

Put together, our various readings point to the experience of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not only that but these various texts point up how the experience transforms our lives with real effect

For Reflection: God’s power and presence impacts our lives in many and various ways.. On Trinity Sunday, what is your favourite way of describing the Trinity?

READINGS AND REFLECTIONS FOR SUNDAY 20 MAY

22/5/2018

Acts 2.1-21
This reading tells of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, shortly after the ascension of Jesus. Pentecost (from the Greek meaning ‘fiftieth day’) came 50 days after Passover, and is also called the ‘Feast of Weeks’ – an agricultural festival that came between Passover and Tabernacles (see Exodus 34.22; Deuteronomy 16.10). There is nothing new about receiving God’s Spirit, as we can see from the psalm: ‘When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground’ (Psalm 104.31), and Peter’s quotation from Joel: ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy’ (v.17). In Psalm 104, this outpouring includes both people and the earth, as also in Paul’s letter (Romans 8.22-23). It is not entirely clear who is included in the disciples’ shared experience, nor where it happens. It simply says that ‘they’ are together in a house. Luke’s imagery should not be taken too literally as there is a play on the word pneuma – it means breath and wind and spirit. Breathing is the sign of life, and receiving God’s Spirit makes us alive. So, a gust of wind (breath) is an appropriate image for the Holy Spirit. Fire represents the presence of God, just as it did for Moses at the burning bush (see Exodus 3).
John 15.26-27; 16.4b-15
How should we translate John’s paraklētos (v.26)? In the NRSV it is ‘Advocate.’ In other translations it can be Counsellor, Comforter, various longer expressions, or simply transliterated as ‘paraclete’. It is John’s word for the Holy Spirit, and literally it means someone who will plead your case in a law court – hence Advocate. For John, the ‘paraclete’ is the one who will speak up for us when we appear before God the Father. This Advocate is characterised as the Spirit of truth. It testifies about Jesus. It will prove the world (of unbelief) wrong about sin, and righteousness, and judgement. It will guide the disciples into truth. It will declare the things that are to come. And it will glorify Jesus. The biblical scholar Raymond Brown has shown that these functions of the Advocate are (almost entirely) the functions Jesus had in his own lifetime. As the Advocate cannot come until Jesus has gone away (v.7), it means that the Holy Spirit is to be understood as the continuation of Jesus’ presence on earth and in the church after Jesus has gone away. Here we have the beginning of the idea of the one God as a Trinity of persons.

READINGS AND REFLECTIONS FOR 13 MAY 2018

9/5/2018

Acts 1.15-17,21-26: After the ascension, the disciples are conscious that their number is one down. They need to make up the number and there are two candidates: Joseph Barsabbas and Matthias. After praying, they cast lots and appoint Matthias. Casting lots is like throwing dice, which to us seems a strange way of discovering the will of God, though it was practised frequently in earlier Judaism by the priests.
1 John 5.9-13 : What does the author of 1 John mean by 'the testimony of God'? This passage explores two themes central to the Gospel of John: witness and life. There, Jesus' own deeds provide the Father's testimony to the Son (John 5.36). The Gospel is the evangelist's own witness, written so that its readers may have life (John 20.31). The purpose of the epistle is parallel: that its readers may know that they have eternal life. The Father's ultimate testimony to the Son was the resurrection; his testimony to the Church is the life that flows from contact with the risen Christ. The testimony of the apostles, evangelists and letter-writers of the Early Church has its source, its focus and its goal in that life.
John 17.6-19: At this point the focus of Jesus’ final words to his disciples changes as he addresses the Father on their behalf, rather than speaking to them directly. Some people refer to this as ‘the high-priestly prayer’. Jesus explains why his disciples are special. They are marked out, not because of any inherent qualities, but because he has made God’s name known to them. Jewish tradition has always been that the name of God reflects his deepest identity (and therefore should not be spoken). Here, Jesus summarises the content of his teaching in this way: it is all about God. To know God in this way makes people holy, separated from the evil of the world, as God is holy and separate.