Day: Sunday 12th May 2013
Time: 2 – 5 pm
Place: St Giles’ Church, Church Lane, Stoke Poges, SL2 2LX

Thousands of books have been collected for this special charity book sale. Don’t miss out.

During the afternoon, the beautiful church of St Giles’ will be open to visitors and cream teas will be served by church members. If the weather allows, there will also be a bouncy castle for the less bookish and more energetic.

Tell your friends and come along!

We are selling donated books to feed children living in a slum area of the Kenyan Rift Valley. Any funds raised will go to feed children through the charity: Deserving Children Africa

About the charity
(From Charlie Styles, one of the trustees)
Deserving Children Africa sprang from the vision to meet a desperate need. One of our founding trustees, Salome, who now lives in Stoke Poges grew up in Kenya. On a visit to her old school a couple of years ago, she heard about how children would faint during the school day because they had not eaten. She later discovered the lengths that these children – particularly little girls – would have to go to in order to earn money for food.

She developed a relationship with an NGO working nearby that would feed the children a daily meal for only £3 per month and started giving money so that some could be fed. We have since formed ourselves as a charitable company and seek to raise funds and find sponsors to feed these children.

The head teacher of the school estimates that 500 of his pupils do not eat daily and so 500 is our target. We are still some way off, but every £3 is another child fed for a month, another little girl off the streets and a contribution towards an education that will help these children change their lives.

More information about the charity can be found at www.deservingchildrenafrica.org.

The men’s group was formed in 2005 by  St Giles’ and St Andrew’s Parish Churches and the Free Church of Stoke Poges. It runs social events for men, plus their friends and colleagues.

Six events are run each year including curry nights, dinners, Saturday morning breakfasts and Saturday day trips to interesting venues (Duxford Air Museum, Heritage Motor Centre, etc.).

Some of these events include a special guest who is invited to speak on a specific topic and to share how their Christian faith has guided and influenced them during their lives.

The group is affiliated to a UK organisation called Christian Vision for Men http://www.cvmen.org.uk, who run an annual conference for men and support Christian men’s groups throughout the UK.

For more details or to book your place at an event please contact: Tony or Nigel
Tony Shortman: 01844-350014
email: tony-mavis[at]shortman.eclipse.co.uk
Nigel Lowe: 07973-349721
email: nigel[at]suchlowe.f2s.com

Future Events

Curry Night – Thursday 23rd May 2013

We are returning to the Indian Summer in New Denham for our annual Curry Night to enjoy their fine food and excellent hospitality. Even if you are a little wary of eating curry, you can be assured that we have carefully selected some items from their menu that have delicate flavours and are certainly not hot. However, those who prefer a “good curry” are also well catered for, so whatever your tastes, this is an evening not to be missed.

Our after dinner speaker will be Jerry Field, a young guy who has had a challenging life! It began with a very tough childhood, but he did mange to get through it and attend a good university. After university, he started his own business organising UK training courses for business leaders around the world. It was during this time that he began attending Holy Trinity in Brompton (HTB), the church from which the Alpha course originated.

HTB invited Jerry to work for them and he began running Alpha courses for the armed services, travelling to some of the remotest and challenging places in the world. So what happened after that? Come and join us for a great curry and hear Jerry’s story entitled “Facing your Fears”.

You can arrive any time between 7:30pm and 8pm for drinks and we start eating at 8pm. For more information and to book your place, contact Tony or Nigel.

An Evening with TANX – Saturday 6th July 2013

By popular demand, we have invited TANX to return for another evening of tank battle games. Once again we will be in teams of four (with each person operating a scale model WW2 Tiger 1 tank) playing this great Radio Controlled Tank Battle game.

The battle zone will be located in the Main Hall, St. Andrews Centre, Rogers Lane, Stoke Poges. Everyone is welcome, Lads (12 years+), Dads and Granddads, so put this date in your diary now. The tank battle games will start at 7:00pm and a fish & chip supper will be provided plus delicious desserts and a good selection of liquid refreshment.

For more information about this event, contact Tony Shortman or Nigel Lowe (contact details above).

Men’s Breakfast – Saturday 14th September 2013

Having previously enjoyed some really good food at the Crown Inn in Crown Lane, Farnham Royal, we are returning there for our next Men’s Breakfast.  If you enjoy a great cooked breakfast, then please join us.  We begin at 8:15am with coffee/tea and sit down for breakfast at 8:30pm.  This is followed by a challenging talk from our speaker plus a question & answer session.  We finish no later than 10:15am.  For further details of this event, contact Tony Shortman or Nigel Lowe (contact details above).

Men’s Dinner – Friday 22nd November 2013

We are returning to the Bellhouse Hotel near Beaconsfield for our annual Men’s Dinner.  The evening will commence at 7:15pm with drinks from the bar, then a delicious buffet meal at 8pm.  Put this date in your diary now as we have already booked an excellent speaker for this event – this is an evening you will not want to miss.  For further details of this event, contact Tony Shortman or Nigel Lowe (contact details above).

Sunday 21st April will be Vision Sunday.

Our services will go ahead as usual, but in the sermons our vicar Harry will set out the vision agreed by our PCC at their Away Day.

Following the service at St Andrew’s there will be a church family lunch followed by the APCM (Annual Parochial Church Meeting) where we look back over 2012 and forward at the year ahead.

In advance, you may want to look at the 2012 Annual Report. Copies will be available from the Church Office on Monday

Vicarage Letter – April 2013

Harry Latham

There is a painting in Manchester City Art Gallery by the Victorian artist William Holman Hunt called “The Shadow of Death.” His most famous work is called “The Light of the World” and depicts an adult Jesus knocking on the door of someone’s life to see if they will open up to Him.

I love “The Light of the World” but I like “The Shadow of Death” even more. It was painted between 1870-73 in oil on canvas and shows a 13 year old Jesus stretching at the end of a day in the Carpenter’s shop.

He is tired and looking forward to a rest. The setting sun makes his stretching shadow fall on the wall behind him and the shelf on the wall suggests the crossbar of the cross on which he would be nailed 20 years later.

His mother Mary looks up and is transfixed by the shadow.

The blurb from the Gallery says: “Hunt combines everyday detail with religious symbolism to create a painting rich in suggestion and meaning. An imaginary moment in the life of Christ contains symbolically His life and suffering. The shadow of Christ’s outstretched arms foretells his crucifixion.”

It continues: “To make the Biblical scenery as accurate as possible, Hunt travelled repeatedly to Jerusalem and took great pains to recreate exactly what he saw. Some critics deplored the depiction of Christ as a working man, but the painting was immensely popular, and over 4,000 engravings of it were printed.”

The painting says to us that Jesus was born (in a sense) to die. The focal point of the Mission (which he chose to accept) was his death on the Cross.
Jesus said of himself that he had come “to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) And as you have often heard me say: “Jesus died to pay a debt he did not owe, because we owed a debt we could not pay.”

As we thought about at Easter, the gift that Jesus died to purchase for us, the gift of forgiveness, freedom, and relationship with God now and for eternity – this gift – is something we have to receive, to take hold of by faith.

Even a little faith will make a great difference. For example the tentative faith of the condemned criminal, hours from death, but aware that Jesus’ death was very different to his own. It is described to us in Luke 23.

One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”

But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”

And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He only asks to be remembered, but Jesus says to him: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Let me challenge you as we move from Easter towards Pentecost to receive with faith (however great or small) the reality of Jesus dying on the Cross for you.

He who once died for us is now risen, ascended and glorified, more alive than ever, and holding out friendship to us.

For it is in the same way we have faith Jesus’ death on the Cross counts for us, that we receive and experience the Holy Spirit and see God work miraculously. As Paul asked the Galatians (3:5): “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” (Answer = “hearing with faith.”)

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