St Nicholas Church Fleetwood,

Weekly News Sheet

St Nicholas Parish Church, Fleetwood

Week beginning 22nd November 2020 – Week 3 in Lockdown 2.0

The church is open daily from 10.30 am-12.30 pm Monday to Friday

for private prayer. Please come and encourage others too!

Sunday 22nd November

9.30 am Zoom worship – please phone the vicarage for details if you would like to link up.

You can listen via your phone if that’s more helpful.

Monday 23rd November

Funeral of Joan Kondrat at Carleton

Friday 27th November

Funeral of Roy Leadbetter at Carleton

Sunday 29th November

9.30 am Zoom worship – Advent Sunday

Church of England Call to Pray

Following the Archbishops’ call for every Christian and person of good will to pray at 6pm every day, for the period of this present lock-down, here is a prayer to use this coming week:

Lord Jesus Christ, in these dark and difficult days, we turn our hearts to you. In ages past, you have delivered our nation from disaster. Do it again, we pray. Give wisdom beyond human wisdom to our leaders, Give strength beyond human strength to the NHS and all our frontline workers. Give comfort beyond human comfort to the elderly and all who grieve. Lord Jesus Christ, in these dark and difficult days, turn your face towards us, have mercy upon us, and heal our land, we pray. Amen.

Diocesan Call to Pray and Give 12th-29th November

Today marks day 10 of 17 days of prayer as together we seek to ask how God would have us respond to this call to give. Your gift will be used towards meeting the shortfall in the parish share here at St Nicholas – which stands at £6443. Last week we circulated a reflection entitled, “Ourselves, Our Souls and Bodies.” This week we have a short and encouraging sermon from Archdeacon Mark Ireland which demonstrates an example of a specific answer to prayer.

Advent 2020 – A Child Shall Lead Them

A reminder that at the back of church there is a supply of booklets, produced by the Diocese, which contain daily reflections for the whole of Advent. Why not pick one up when you pop in for private prayer and join with us as we journey through this special season together?

Christmas Draw Envelopes

Sincere thanks to those of you who have already returned your envelopes. The completed envelopes and money can be put in the wall safe when you visit church for private prayer or kept until after lockdown. The sale of the envelopes will go some way to recouping what we could have earned had we had a repeat of last year’s wonderful Christmas Fair!

100 Club

This week’s winners are Nancy Burr, Christopher Jones, and Shirley Kershaw.

Prayers

Please continue to pray for Dorothy Cox, Dorothy Jones, Alan Mather, and the families of Joan Kondrat and Roy Leadbetter to be laid to rest this coming week.

WEEKLY SERMON

It never rains … ! An answer to prayer

Jesus said, ‘Ask and it will be given to you.’ (Matthew 7.7)

Victorian church builders clearly never expected it to rain in Lancashire. They built gutters far too small and shallow, and as a result dry rot is a recurring feature in many of our church buildings. However I am glad I had an early experience of dry rot when I was a very young vicar in Accrington because it taught me an important lesson about prayer and giving which has stayed with me ever since.

I remember standing looking into a gaping hole at the back of church, where we had just hacked back the plaster and removed the floor to treat a big outbreak of dry rot. Fixing it was going to cost £5,000 (a lot of money in those days) and I knew we had nothing in the bank. I dreaded the argument that would take place at PCC. As I stood praying over the hole I sensed God saying to me, ‘Don’t let the church get distracted into a long fundraising campaign. Just ask them all to pray and see what I will do.’

So I explained the challenge to the congregation and told them that we would not be doing any fundraising at all for the dry rot; instead we would hold a day of prayer. I asked every single member of the congregation to turn up sometime the following Saturday and spend half an hour in prayer in church, and then if God so moved them to bring a gift to church the following day for the dry rot. I also announced that we would reveal the total offerings received at the end of the evening service.

Having made this bold statement I was assailed by doubts in the days that followed, as many senior church members openly questioned the naivety of this young vicar. However as I spent time that Saturday in church, praying and watching others to come and pray, gradually God gave me a peace that all was in his hands.

At the end of the evening service the following day the treasurer handed me an envelope with the total collections for the day – to our utter amazement and joy the total came to £5,271. Such a specific answer to prayer boosted the faith of the congregation far more than any of my sermons.

We did end up having a lively discussion in PCC – not the one I had feared - but rather about how to spend the extra £271 God had given us!

The Venerable Mark Ireland, Archdeacon of Blackburn