The Fair is this Saturday 31st May 11am – 4pm at St Andrew’s Church and in Bridgeman Road, N1, with activities for all the family:

This Saturday is the Barnsbury Family Fair – we’d love to see you there! More details on the flyer below.

We have some exciting events planned over Advent and Christmas at both St Andrew’s and Church on the Corner (our sister church). You are very welcome to join us!

• Saturday 2nd December: Messy Christmas at St Andrew’s, 11am-1pm
  During Open Church, we’ll be running Christmas crafts, fun and games, stories and songs for families. Refreshments provided.
• Sunday 3rd December: Advent Carols at Church on the Corner, 7pm
  Welcome in the season of Advent with carols and other festivities in our Sunday service at Church on the Corner.
• Saturday 9th December: Decking the Halls at St Andrew’s, 11am-1pm
  We’re decorating St Andrew’s and making our wonderful building look fabulously festive. All welcome to join in!
• Saturday 9th December: Cally Lights Switch On by Jean Stokes Centre, Carnoustie Drive, 1.30pm-4.30pmThe St Andrew’s pop-up choir will be singing carols from 3.45pm, and we’re running a table of Christmas crafts for all to enjoy.
• Sunday 17th December: Carols by Candlelight at St Andrew’s, 6pm
  Come and enjoy atmospheric candles by candlelight, followed by refreshments. All welcome.
• Sunday 24th December: Christingle service at St Andrew’s, 4pm
  Join in the fun at our family Christingle service! This is always a festive favourite – come and share in the message of hope.
• Sunday 24th December: Christmas Eve services at St Andrew’s
  We celebrate our usual 9am and 10.30am services on Christmas Eve, as well as a special Midnight Mass at 11.30pm.
• Monday 25th December: Christmas Day service at St Andrew’s, 10.30am
  Joy to the world, the Lord has come! Join with us as we celebrate Christ’s birth and remember what it means for us today.

Are you looking for a new challenge in 2022? We are recruiting for an Administrator to join us at an exciting phase of our church life as we welcome a new Priest in Charge and make plans for the future.

You’ll be the lynchpin of our newly reorganised team, ensuring that our services and teams of volunteers are running smoothly, our finances and hire agreements are well organised, and that our buildings are being maintained and looked after.

You will be the first point of contact for many people dealing with the Church, so you’ll need a friendly, approachable, professional manner.

Our ideal candidate will demonstrate initiative, in depth experience of office organisation and systems, excellent IT skills and a “can do” attitude, and will thrive working with and contributing to a friendly and supportive team of Clergy and volunteers.

You will be expected to review, develop and implement processes and procedures to ensure smooth, efficient and effective Church office operations

More information can be found on the Job Description

Salary : £26k per annum
Hours: 35 hours per week, occasional evenings required

Closing date: 4th March 2022

Interview date: 14th March 2022

Application – CV and covering letter to helencodling@churchonthecorner.org.uk

Arts on the Corner is happening this Sunday! Come along any time 4pm-6pm for still life drawing and painting, plus MARBLING We’ll wash it down with the usual free tea, coffee, toast and cake.

Last minute changes to covid restrictions meant we had to move our Carol service outdoors. But it was wonderful nonetheless.

Christmas at Church on the Corner

Join us for services throughout this Christmas season as we join with our friends at St.Andrew’s Thornhill Square.

It’s the next session of Arts on the Corner this Sunday! Festive printmaking, ceramic decoration, still life inspiration & tea + cake… what could be better on a chilly Sunday? Bring your own creative projects, or try the activities on offer. Book your free place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/…/arts-on-the-corner…

If you haven’t made plans to celebrate Bonfire night never fear. This Sunday we will have treats and fireworks after church!
Join us at 7pm

We’re delighted that we will be back in church this Sunday 23rd May. Fittingly it is Pentecost, the celebration of the Birth of the Church.
It promises to be a wonderful and joyful evening.

We have yet to confirm whether we are back for good – we may do a blend of virtual and in person services over the summer depending on who is around and what we can sustain in these next weeks. Check back here and on twitter to confirm the plans.

If there was ever a year to think about Lent differently, this may be it. We have been in a season of Lent for a whole year – this has been our long journey through the wilderness. And Lent is about walking in the footsteps of Jesus in his 40 days in the wilderness. And so it isn’t just about what you give up, but what you learn and who you become through that simplicity and solitude.

And it is possible that this 40 days will be the end of our long wilderness experience. But if that is the case, then in the rush to get back to normality it is important not to forget. So the question is, what have you learned? How has God shaped you over this year, and what are the ways that you have grown. We will be reflecting on this together over this season as we look forward with an anticipation greater than ever before to the end of this longest lent and the majestic new beginning that is Easter. I’d love to hear your reflections on that. mark@churchonthecorner.org.uk

The wilderness has been a formative experience for many, and if you want to read some reflections as you make sense of your own experience of wilderness here is some recommended reading.

Our annual advent project is on the theme of ‘Small Mercies’ and members of our community are reflecting on that theme of the simple blessings from God found in every day life that offer joy and hope in difficult days. You can follow along here facebook.com/churchonthecorner

One of the unexpected things to come out of lockdown has been the number of people searching the internet for how to pray. Perhaps it is natural when we are afraid and feel out of control, even if we are not sure that we believe in God to want to pray for ourselves and those we love. Prayer is the act of pausing, and turning towards God and acknowledging that we can’t do this by ourselves and we need help. And it works – even if we don’t always understand how or why. And many people have discovered that prayer isn’t just something you do in a crisis, but an investment in a better, more balanced and more peaceful life.

Prayer was so central to Jesus life that people who got to know him said ‘Teach us to pray like you’. And his answer was beautifully simple and has gone down in history.

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.

We call it the Lord’s prayer. It can be prayed quickly from memory, or slowly one line at a time. It is a prayer we can simply say every day, or use as a model to shape our own words of prayer. And that is it. It is simple enough for a small child to pray, and yet profound enough for us never to grow out of it.

Obviously countless books have been written on this, but here are three observations about why this is an amazing prayer.

• It is personal. Before this moment no-one had ever dared to call God ‘Father’, but Jesus shows us that God is patient, kind and loves us unconditionally, just like a father should. And as we pray this we find ourselves part of a vast family along across the world and though history who pray this prayer.
• It reorientates us. It is a prayer that turns us away from ourselves and what we want, and towards God and others. We pray hallowed be your name, not mine, and your will be done, not mine. And in doing so earth becomes a little more like heaven. Like a green plant turning its leaves towards the sun, our turning towards God is life giving and healing.
• It brings things into focus. It teaches us to live one day at at time, and be grateful for ordinary things – daily bread, forgiveness, safety. But also  teaches us to become part of a much bigger story of forgiveness, opposition to evil, and of seeking heaven on Earth.

So you are invited to pray. You don’t need to do anything special or be anyone special, you can pray this anywhere and whenever you like. But perhaps find a still quiet place day by day and discover what many others have done that prayer can be the thing that makes all the difference.

Today is the traditional celebration of Midsummer. I often feel a bit anxious at this point that the summer is slipping by. But midsummer is actually rather misnamed – it is really mid year and in astronomical terms it is the start of summer. So many good things lie ahead.

It is also the celebration of the birth of John the Baptist, and those two things are connected. John was the cousin of Jesus, born six months before him, and his life of ascetic simplicity in the wilderness was a challenge to the self satisfaction and complacency of his culture, his fearless preaching denounced the powerful and the corrupt, and his baptism was a call to start afresh. And all of that was a way to make straight paths and prepare the way for the Lord.

And if you remember John said of Jesus “He must become greater; I must become less.” And so while Jesus was born at the point of the year when the days start to lengthen, John was born at the turn of the year as the days start to shorten.

So John the Baptist tells us to get ready for what is to come. Many of us have got through lockdown with netflix marathons, too much time staring at screens and on the sofa. And that is all fine, but we have to admit it isn’t really life giving. John would challenge us to get ready for what is next by stripping away the distractions and the obstacles and to finding a new beginning. He calls us to strip away the clutter, to start again and find in a new simplicity a way to see the things that really matter.

And so at this point of new beginning, what does it look like to make straight paths and prepare the way for the Lord? Our Virtual Homegroups will be asking that question, and they meet this evening. For more information or to join one email helencodling@churchonthecorner.org.uk

Helen wrote the loveliest piece about what we have discovered during lockdown. Read it here. Independent 14th June.

46 ‘Why do you call me “Lord, Lord”, and do not do what I tell you? 47 I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. 48 That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.’
Luke 6:46-49

Lockdown has offered many people the chance for us to have a clear out, and to put some of those Marie Kondo principles into practice and clear the clutter. And as a result, charity shops are braced for a deluge bric-a-brac and old clothes and when they reopen. But perhaps it isn’t just the cupboards that need a clear out.

Our reading is one of those passages that is so familiar that we perhaps never give it a second thought;  the wise man who built his house on the rock. But I’m struck the picture is rather more subtle than I remember. In Sunday school I wouldn’t have known much about architecture but the idea of building on sand was a fairly obvious mistake. But looking more closely, the contrast in Luke 6:46-49 is not between two locations, but on the method of building. It is a the parable about the value of good foundations. The impatient builder just started building upwards, the wise builder digs until he reached the bedrock, before laying foundations, and that makes for a building that will withstand the storm.

But that raises the question about what it mean to dig down in order to lay good foundations? What do I need to clear away in order to build a life that doesn’t come crashing down when the storm hits. Isn’t that an interesting question!

And I’m struck that our lives are often built on some fairly shaky things. If we examine our motives, and what drives us, then we start to find things like pride, ambition, competitiveness, fear of missing out, envy, jealousy and even resentment or  bitterness at play, much of which we are not really very proud of, and certainly don’t bring us joy.

If it is true that we need to dig down in order to build up, and if life post lockdown is to be different – simpler, calmer and set on firmer foundations, then what is the baggage that you would need to leave outside the heavenly charity shop. What would it look like to have a clear out of your heart? We need to tread carefully with this – often going through old things brings up mixed emotions, but there is no doubt that there is freedom to be found letting go of baggage that we may have held on to for many years.