The United Reformed Church Chesham

From the Elders, September 2024

Our Tercentenary year is now well underway, we have already had many successful events. We have two major events ahead of us. The first is our celebration of the Chesham Heritage weekend which we shall participate in on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th September. The Elders decided to move our Harvest Service to this weekend so that the Church will be decorated for Harvest as well as displaying items relating to our activities in the last 300 years. You will read in this magazine all the details arranged by our wonderful Tercentenary committee. The Harvest service will celebrate the “Harvest of the Church” as well as the harvest of the earth, and look forward to the future, our challenge will be laying the groundwork for the next hundred years.

The second major event is Sunday October 13th when our Synod Moderator, Revd George Watt, will lead our worship which will be followed by a Celebration Lunch. We have so many people we wish to invite that we have taken the unusual step of asking members of our congregation to let us know if they wish to attend by the end of August so we can decide if we can activate all or part of our second list of invitees.

We continue our remarkable outreach to the community which requires so many people to work harmoniously together. It was good to have our Town Mayor Francis Holly and his wife Caroline visit Meet and Eat. A week later we were joined by our Member of Parliament Sarah Green.

Some of the mothers coming to Meet and Eat have asked if it would be possible for the Church to provide a “safe space” for them to meet during term time and discuss parenting and life struggles. It has been agreed to start this on a monthly basis, if it is successful Angela Tommasome from Buckinghamshire Family Information Service and Wendy Thomas from Early Years will occasionally organise workshops for the group.

We are investigating working with Restore Hope to bring food parcels from them for people living close to our church to collect on a Wednesday morning. This requires volunteers to drive to Restore Hope in Latimer and bring the boxes of food to our church. If you are able to assist with this occasionally please speak to one of the Elders.

Alongside all this outreach it is important to enable spiritual growth of our members and friends. I am delighted that Alan Yates has agreed to lead another series of bible studies, this time we will look at the letter to the Hebrews based on the daily devotions written by Revd John Proctor. John retired in August 2020 as General Secretary of the United Reformed Church, after six years in the post. Before that, he spent 28 years teaching the New Testament in Westminster College, Cambridge. I had the pleasure of attending several of his lectures when my late wife was training for the Methodist ministry

Yours in Christ,

Alan Callow