We’ve slowly been souping up our rather basic church website over the past few months. The best thing we did was get our kind computer-literate friend to change it to a WordPress platform, which was familiar to us from blogging. The old site used Joomla and was just too difficult for us to get our heads around.
We try and update the site a couple of times a week to keep it live, and it seems that people are beginning to use it a little. Most of our congregation aren’t on the internet, but we think that the website is especially important for those who aren’t yet in church.
In our quest to make the site friendly and useful, a video of the Vicar has now been produced by Capable, a church member, and Compassion, who is a great friend of our congregation. I think they’ve done a great job and we’re hoping it’ll be a good introduction for people visiting the website. At least they won’t be surprised by the Vicar’s Scottish accent!
Following up from a blog post I wrote nearly 2 years ago(!), I’ve just been putting together some suggested prayers for our church primary school. I used some of the suggested ones in the blog post and some others I sourced from around the web. This is the selection I’ve given them for first thing in the school day:
Good morning Lord
This is your day.
We are your children.
Show us your way. Amen.
God bless the sky that is above us
the earth that is beneath us
your image deep within us
the day that lies before us.
Amen.
Lord, teach us how to keep your day
And lead and bless us all the way. Amen.
For this new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends.
For everything your goodness sends,
We thank You, dearest Lord.
Amen.
Jesus, gentle Shepherd,
Bless your lamb today;
Keep me in your footsteps,
Never let me stray.
Guard me through the daytime.
Every hour, I pray;
Keep my feet from straying
From the narrow way.
Amen.
(Sung) The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
His mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning,
New every morning.
Great is your faithfulness O Lord.
Great is your faithfulness.
I found a lovely but very amateur clip of the Calvary 1st Nigerian choir singing this – the singing is gorgeous but the video is rather out of focus so I suggest you look at something else in your internet browser whilst you listen.
Starting next Sunday for the rest of Lent (and a bit afterwards) the Vicar will be taking us through a few chapters of Hebrews in his sermons. So this, of course, will be our theme song to accompany the preaching. It’s also one we sang on my conference last week, so it’s sort of in my head anyway.
I’ll have to listen online next week as I’m in Junior Church for a second week. But I think we might try and sing along to this song in the Vicarage at teatime so those of us who’ll not be in the main body of the kirk during the sermon will have a little taste at what everyone else is up to.
Here’s my take on Anzac biscuits – a fast and fabulous recipe which produces a great mound of tasty coconut and oat treats. I can produce about 40 in a single batch and they are extremely popular with all ages. They are also egg-free, so good for vegans or Asian vegetarians.
Ingredients
3oz/75g porridge oats
3oz/75g desiccated coconut
4oz/100g plain flour
4oz/100g sugar
40z/100g butter or marg (soft is fine)
1tbspn golden syrup
1tspn bicarbonate of soda, dissolved in 2 tbspn hot water
Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Meanwhile, melt the marg and golden syrup in a jug in the microwave, or a pan on the stove if you prefer. Add the bicarb to the hot water in a small cup or dish and then stir the fizzy mix into the warm marg/syrup combo. Then add the warm wet ingredients to the dry ones and stir in carefully.
For smallish Hobnob size biscuits use teaspoons of mixture – I can fit 16 on a standard baking sheet (covered with silicone lining), leaving room for spreading. Bake at about 180ºC (Gas Mark 4) for 8-12 minutes until the biscuits are golden all over and most have flattened out after rising. Transfer to a rack for cooling after they’ve had a few minutes to firm up.
The gallery below shows some slightly larger ones made using dessertspoonfuls of the mixture which gives you about 24 biscuits from a single batch.
Back from deepest Leicestershire and feeling rather spacey after three nights in a strange bed with unfamiliar pillows. But on my home computer so able to share the lovely song and video from Stuart Townend that we saw at the Ministers’ Wives conference. It’s not called ‘This is my Devotion’ as I thought it might be but ‘Christ be in My Waking’. Which is what I want, even when I’m feeling rather out of it after being away.
I’ll have lots to blog next week when I get back from Hothorpe Hall where I’m on the Proclamation Trust’s Minister’s Wives conference. I’m being very well fed on a diet of Ezekiel, Luke, tales of minister’s wives from history, seafood pasta and cake. I didn’t bring a laptop, so I’m using the steamdriven conference centre computer and I don’t want to spend too much time online. There are too many lovely people here to talk to and a wonderful bookstall and space to pray and think.
I was going to upload a great song video we watched yesterday but the Jurassic system isn’t letting me show it to you. So instead, I’m going to commend Open Doors to you and their campaign to get those who are able to write letters of encouragement to Christians around the world who are suffering for their faith. We are writing some this afternoon here at Hothorpe. It’s such an encouragement for us to be here that we want to share some of that with brothers and sisters in far more difficult situations.
At Christmas, my sister bought some great easy-use chopsticks for the kids. They are joined together at the top so are a good way for kids to learn to eat Chinese food in a fun way and not starve. It’s an excellent way to learn not to drop food on yourself. And you can always use a spoon at the end!
A friend recently linked to this excellent video on Facebook and suggested it might be the solution in small churches where musicians are thin on the ground. We’ve been blessed recently by musicians playing in our services and replacing the cds and midi files, but one (Rocky, our Ministry Trainee) is leaving in the summer, so we’re praying for reinforcements. If you know any musicians, or even some helpful robots, do please send them our way…
The kids eventually agreed to go in the costumes they said they would yesterday morning, although the Queen switched from the purple dress (which had been mine and she said was too baggy) to a blue one of hers (which is now too short and she had to wear with jeggings). And didn’t they turn out lovely? Bit of a pity that the Engineer’s (sorry) Mr Munroe’s eyes are hidden, but he was very tired after two nights away on a school trip. Yay for World Book Day!
Dr Who, Violet Baudelaire and Mr Munroe ready for action
Rather sadly, a good number of their schoolmates weren’t dressed up so a teacher from school and I discussed issuing some suggestions next year – aided by the growing list from Wednesday’s post.
Kids find it hard to sit still at the best of times, but as I read with children at our church school I’ve noticed a few who just can’t keep themselves in a single place when they’re reading aloud, let alone doing it whilst listening to others read or reading to themselves. I liked this illustration of the phenomenon I found recently:[HT: Abraham Piper]
I’ll have lots to blog next week when I get back from Hothorpe Hall where I’m on the Proclamation Trust’s 
[HT: 
The Vicar's Wife 