United Parish Service Sunday 25 March 2012

This Sunday we will be holding our parish’s Annual General Meeting, where we will be electing new parish councillors and wardens and making plans for the year to come.

So that we can all play an equal part in this meeting, this Sunday (25 March 2012) we are combining our morning services and meeting at St Andrew’s Church, Umina Beach at 10am. There will be no service at 8am at St Andrew’s or at 10am at St Luke’s. Sunday Night Live, our worship service specially designed for families will meet as normal at 5pm on Sunday night.

If you have any questions, please contact Murray on 0452 207 292.

Baptism preparation:

Christian Baptism is a joyful, yet solemn occasion. It’s joyful, in that the church is celbrating a welcome of a new member. But it’s solemn because in baptism, parents make sincere promises to raise their children to know the Christian faith, and what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Baptism (also popularly known as christening) marks the start of a child’s journey as a Christian. Because an important part of the Christian life is participating in life with other believers and growing in faith with them, it’s expected that those who bring their children to commit them to the Christian life will be involved in the life of their local church. It wouldn’t make sense to expect your children to be a member of an organisation that you weren’t interested in being involved with!

To help parents understand those promises, and what baptism is for, we hold baptism preparation events. The next preparation sessions will be held on Sunday afternoons at St Andrew’s Church, 360 Ocean Beach Rd, Umina, on the dates below.

11 March 2012, 4pm – Why Jesus?

25 March 2012, 4pm – Why baptism?

15 April 2012, 4pm – The baptism service.

The session will be followed by our new Sunday-night family service, Sunday Night Live, which starts at 5pm and finishes by 6pm. A creche will be provided for parents attending the baptism preparation sessions, and Sunday Night Live is designed for children to be involved.

If you have any questions, please contact Murray or the church office.

We hope you have had a relaxing and enjoying Christmas.

This Sunday is New Year’s Day, and we are marking it with a combined service at St Andrew’s Anglican Church, Umina at 10am. (So please don’t turn up at St Luke’s Anglican Church, Woy Woy at 10am, or St Andrew’s at 8am!)

This Sunday we will also use to mark the Feast of Epiphany, where we remember the visit of the Magi (aka the Three Kings, or the Wise Men) to Jesus, and how they recognised him as someone deserving of worship. I wonder what questions their worship of Jesus, though they knew so little about him, might inspire in our minds…

We hope to see you on Sunday – 10am, St Andrew’s, Umina

Christmas is a time of hope

Christmas is one of the hightlights of the Christian year. At Christmas we celebrate God’s love for us, shown for us in the fact that God sent Jesus to live on earth with us, to teach us how to live, to die on the cross for our sins, and to rise from death to give us the hope of the resurrection. We can celebrate all of these things because of the events we remember at Christmas time.

This year, our main Christmas services are:

Christmas Eve, 24 December

4:30pm — Crib service

St Luke’s Anglican Church, Woy Woy

6:00pm — Crib service

St Andrew’s Church, Umina

11:30pm — Midnight Mass

St Luke’s Church, Woy Woy

Christmas Day, 25 December

8:00am — Christmas Communion

St Andrew’s Church, Umina

10:00am — Christmas Eucharist

St Luke’s Church, Woy Woy

We hope you will join us at this special time of the Christian year. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below, or contact us.

Members of the “Parish Link” team met for their end-of-year celebration on Sunday 20 November. We enjoyed a great bring-and-share lunch and heard from visiting speaker Elaine Pemble who shared with us on the subject of using hearing aids.

Join us on Sunday 16 October to celebrate St Luke’s Day.

Our church on Blackwall Road is named in honour of ‘Luke the Evangelist’, the person who wrote the second of the gospels (the stories of Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection) in the New Testament.

St Luke’s gospel is well-loved, as it has the full nativity story which is often read at Christmas time. His sequel to the life of Jesus is known as the “Acts of the Apostles” and tells the story of the what happened to Jesus’ disciples after he went to heaven. “Acts” is the next book of the Bible after St John’s gospel.

After our 10am service at St Luke’s Church, we will celebrate with a sumptuous morning tea. Please feel free to join us.

Left: Saint Luke, painted by the French artist James Tissot.