Revd Liz Richardson
Below you will find my monthly newsletter which also appears in the Capel & Beare Green Magazine. If you wish to receive this newsletter by email, please subscribe here.
Posted on March 24, 2018 by lrichardson
Dear All, As I write this with the snow on the ground it hardly seems like Easter is nearly here and Spring has almost begun! However, Easter is approaching fast and when we do get the odd lovely warm day, it is a wonderful thing. By the time you read this we may even have celebrated the most important time of the Christian calendar. A time when we travel with the Lord Jesus to Jerusalem, continue with him through the Last Supper and accompanied him to the cross on Good Friday. And then the quietness and stillness of Easter Saturday as we await the joy of Easter morning when his disciples find the empty tomb and find him resurrected in a body which appears to show the marks of his wounding but nevertheless can appear and disappear at will. There are many ways of looking at Holy Week and the season of Easter and each year I find there is more and more to discover about the Easter events. Each event of Holy Week is a part of the Easter story and Easter will mean far more if you consider each one as they build up to the end of…
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Posted on March 13, 2018 by lrichardson
Dear all We have had another very full month in church as we held a Special Parochial Church Meeting (SPCM) a couple of weeks ago to review our activities in 2017 and then another SPCM straight after with our friends from St Margaret’s Ockley to appoint our new joint PCC and Churchwardens. This was followed by a celebratory Bring and Share lunch which we enjoyed as two parishes united and looking very much forward to the future. Capel’s SPCM took the place of our Annual Meeting which we normally hold in April and the full report for the past year and our end of year accounts are available in church. However, I thought I would give you a shortened update of what we have all been up to with a few advertisements for this year too. So here goes! My Chair’s report began with last Easter highlighting a new event on Palm Sunday which was a procession led by two donkeys along the street towards church, re-enacting Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We are doing it again this year so please join us, at Bennetts Green, just past Capel News where we will congregate. Holy Week and Easter continued with…
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Posted on February 7, 2018 by lrichardson
Dear all This month, I am delighted to be able to tell you formally that we are now according to the new pastoral scheme for the parishes of Ewhurst, Forest Green, Okewood, Ockley and Capel, a united parish with St Margaret’s Ockley under the auspices of the Surrey Weald Team of churches. From now on we are to be known as the parish of Capel and Ockley. The Church Commissioners received no objections to the scheme so were able to ‘make it’ on the 27th December 2017 and it came into effect on the 1st January 2018! This is great news. So what happens now you may ask? Well, you will see in our calendar of services and events that we are now obliged to bring forward what would have been the APCM in this parish in April so that it becomes a Special Parochial Church Meeting. That meeting will be first of two to be held in church on Sunday 11th February at 11.45am in which the main business is to as usual review the past year in church activities and those of the PCC plus an opportunity to review the annual accounts for the parish. That meeting will…
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Posted on December 31, 2017 by lrichardson
Dear all Happy New Year! As I write this just before Christmas I find myself as usual panicking about last minute Christmas presents, cards and food, as well as anticipating the joy and anticipation of the season to come. I mean how many pairs of socks does someone really need?! It’s the same every year – however organised I try to be I cannot seem to escape the pressure of this combination of joyful celebration and frenetic preparation!! I share this not in any way to complain but simply to acknowledge the beauty, joy and the complexity of the season. One of the things that is helping me navigate my way through the richness and complexity of these days before Christmas at the moment is the photograph we have on our mantelpiece of a little three year Ethiopian girl that our family is sponsoring through Compassion UK but more of that later on…. Recently in church we began the gospel of Mark with his opening words which simply state ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’. And that is what Christmas and for that matter New Year is all about – it is the…
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Posted on December 12, 2016 by lrichardson
Dear all Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat. If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do, if you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you! The words of this old Christmas rhyme come to mind as I write this letter to you all. First off, ‘Christmas is coming’ – rather fast now – and we have much to offer everyone in the way of our Christmas services and events this December. There are all the usual favourites and I do hope you will join us in one or more of our services. Please do note that the title ‘midnight communion’ is a bit misleading and that due to your vicar needing some sleep we begin at 11 and that by midnight communion has taken place and we will be ready to wish one another a happy Christmas as we sing Silent Night by candlelight. Of course Father Christmas would rather you were all tucked up in bed early too!! Next, ‘the geese are getting fat’ – I do feel a bit sorry for all poultry at this time of the year but I am afraid my…
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