Our joint parish communion service this Sunday will take place at St Mary and All Saints Church, Dunsfold at 10am. All are welcome.With Reverend Ian Maslin stepping back from duties at the moment our celebrant at the Holy Communion service will be the Reverend Rutton Viccajee, assistant curate at St Nicolas Church, Cranleigh.Reverend Rutton has been with us before and we're sure you will want to extend a warm Dunsfold welcome to him.Unfortunately, we do need to extend an apology to those of you who are our online congregation. This Sunday we will not be able to offer a Zoom link to our service.However, work is underway to ensure that in coming weeks we will be able to restore the Zoom connections so those of you at home, in hospital or further afield will be able to be part of our growing congregation. We do want you to be part of our church.
Biblical Hebrew, studied by trainee priests, can often pose a challenge for aspiring ministers.For Rajiv Sidhu it posed more of a struggle – and led him to discover he was, in fact, dyslexic. That in turn taught him to look at how the Church communicates the Christian faith in a new way.Despite working as a Geography teacher for 10 years, it was only through Hebrew that he realised he needed special education support. Now, he has said that his own struggle helped him understand why others may find Christian teachings based on words, rather than symbols, can be challenging.Rajiv, 32, was raised partly in Malaysia with his grandparents and has taught in Dagenham and the Isle of Wight. “I had always assumed that my vocation was to be a teacher, although I now realise that you can have different vocations at different points in your life,” he said. Supporting his local parish already, Rajiv was encouraged by his priest to consider becoming a vicar. With support from the Diocesan Director of Ordinands, Rajiv explored his calling for a year before resigning his post as a teacher and beginning theological training in Oxford. He then completed a placement with the prison ministry in Malaysia. During his training, Rajiv studied biblical languages. He said: “It was my Hebrew tutor who suggested that I might be dyslexic, which gave me a deeper insight into myself. “We are all created in God’s diverse image - and this applies as much to our minds as anything else. What does this look like for Church? How can we include, welcome, and celebrate neuro-diversity in Christian spaces and places? We often shy away from the images and symbols in church, though these can be the most effective teachers of the faith.”Rajiv will, alongside six others, be ordained at Portsmouth Cathedral on Saturday, June 26.
Emily Emmerson-Finch’s journey started when she got the bus.Not catching a bus though: at the age of 22 she took the extraordinary decision to spend her savings buying a double decker bus and transforming it into a youth and community centre.A church youth worker, Emily drove the bus around the York and later the Scarborough coastal areas. She hosted sessions for young people on board the bus, with the opportunity to pray afterwards, as well as drop-ins for families and youth work training to churches. When she left to move to Newcastle in 2018, its work had touched the lives of 5,000 young people and the Bus Stop charityhad been established. She remains a trustee of the charity and it is still going strong on the North Yorkshire coast.Now she is embarking on a new journey – of training to become a distinctive deacon in the Church of England. “The young people I met through working on the bus called it their ‘second home’ and a place where they felt that they really belonged,” she said.“They described the bus as their church and they challenged preconceptions of what church is. I started exploring ordination four or five years ago. It was when I was on the bus that I felt that God was maybe calling me. “But I was confused at that time as I thought then that a vicar was very much inside the church. My passion is for reaching out to people who don’t come to church.“Then I found out about the diaconate – I am going to be trained as a distinctive deacon and my focus as a distinctive deacon can be described as being at the door of the church, welcoming people in and also encouraging the church to go out into the world.”
I can still remember one of my secondary school teachers who was so passionate about her love for physical geography that her enthusiasm rubbed off on her students and led me to apply to study the subject at university. I can still picture the teacher talking to us whilst standing in a middle of a river or pointing out the dramatic awe and wonder of the glacial landscape of the mountains when we were on a geography field trip.Most of us can identify a teacher or someone in our lives who has helped to shape us and encouraged our formation and development as we have transitioned from childhood into adulthood.This week we are looking forward to the opportunity to celebrate the work of our teachers through a national Thank a Teacher Day that takes place on Wednesday 23rd June. You can send an individual card to a teacher or school staff, or if you prefer you can contribute to a national Thank a Teacher card which will include contributions from children and adults from all over the UK.We know from the different accounts in the Bible, that people referred to Jesus as Rabbi or teacher and that he made time for children and listened to them. In Matthew’s gospel, there is a powerful account of Jesus rebuking the disciples for trying to turn the children away from him:"Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there."Jesus sends a strong message that children are precious and important to God and should always be welcomed and cherished so they can be nurtured and flourish.This week we would normally be welcoming over 3,000 Year 6 children to the cathedral as part of our annual Leavers’ Services to mark their transition from primary to secondary school.Due to Covid restrictions, it won’t be possible to do this in person and to see the children’s faces light up as they walk through the cathedral doors with their school banners. However, the Education team have produced some great Leavers' Service resources and materials so that our schools and churches can come together to offer a Leavers’ Service for the children and parents in the church or in the school.Our forthcoming Diocesan Synod on 30th June provides another opportunity to hear and listen to children in our Diocese, when children from two of our Church schools will be sharing how their own faith has grown and developed through being part of a Christian community – their school.
