What to Know this Summer
It’s summer time and despite promises of a La Niña summer where the weather would match our mood for the last two years, there have been some nice days. I hope you have been able to get out in the midst of God’s creation and rejoice! I know of course that many of you have not been able to—Fortescues included. We have had family members as confirmed cases, multiple tests and in some cases are still waiting for results. The omicron variant of COVID is running rampant and several staff have succumbed to illness. Please be assured of our prayers and please reach out to your Growth Group or a member of staff if you are in need of help.
As summer continues, there are a few things I wanted to share with you this week.
Service Times
For clarity, I thought it would be helpful to map out the next few weeks as there were changes over the Christmas weekend that may have confused some.
9, 16 & 23 January — 8.30am, 10am (Kids program), 6pm
30 January — We are currently planning towards celebration services for our three previous morning congregations.
At 8.30am there will be a 9am Church Celebration service
At 10am there will be two simultaneous gatherings: a Family Church Celebration in the Upper Hall and a 10.30 Church celebration in the auditorium.
We will make an announcement in the next week about Christ Church Nights for 30 January and beyond!
From 6 February — our morning service times will be 9.15am and 10.45am.
We know that is a lot to take in but check the website and the most up to date information will always be there! If for any reason we need to only run church online one week, you will receive an email and a text message letting you know, but we think this is unlikely. As always, the livestream is available every week via the website.
COVID Safety
A reminder masks are compulsory indoors until at least the last week of January so for all church activities, bring a mask, check in, social distance where possible and depart from the building briskly at the end into the outdoors where there is greater safety.
Ruth Ridgway: A Celebration of Life
Ruth Ridgway, who has been one of our mission partners for more than 25 years, passed into the glorious presence of the Lord on 8 December, 2021 at 4:16 am. The Ridgway family are having a “Celebration of Life” for Ruth, on her birthday, next Monday at 1pm (AEDST). They would like to invite you and anyone that knew Ruth to be with us too. Several ladies and their husbands from India who knew Ruth well will share and John will close with a few final thoughts and prayer.
The event will be live on Zoom from Denver and you can join in by following this link.
2022 Ministry Trainees
Christ Church St Ives has a great history of training and sending people out to serve the Gospel. Last year we announced that one of our strategic priorities for the next five years was to recapture the commitment and passion to train and encourage men and women for a lifetime of ministry and to rebuild our Ministry Trainee program.
Well, thanks be to God, in 2022, we will have six ministry trainees on our team. We have four people doing MTS: Rachel Chan, Rosie Campbell, Courtney Booth, and new in 2022, Jamie Woods. We also have two people coming onboard as student ministers while studying at Moore College—Josh and Lisa Sawyer.
It is going to be an exciting year and I want to say thank you for your incredible support of this initiative in 2021 and we look forward to giving you an opportunity to support it again in 2022.
On top of all this, there are camps and weddings and whole lot of other things happening, so please continue to pray that God would do his work through his Word by his Spirit and that men and women and boys and girls would hear the Gospel and be saved.
Amen.
