Parish News

Confirmation Course

Want to know more about the Christian faith? Then there’s a 4-week course not to be missed just for you! It will commence on Wednesday 5th October at 7.00pm at the vicarage, 17 Shadforth Drive, Billingham. You don’t have to get Confirmed at the end of it if that not for you at this point in your journey. The course will be led by Rev. Tim Parker and Rev. Susie Green.

5th October: What is a Christian?

12th October: How to grow as a Christian

19th October: How to live as a Christian

26th October: All about Holy Communion

The Confirmation service will take place in our deanery on Sunday 6th November. Venue and time to be decided
Reflections on the

New Wine Summer Conference 2011

Fifteen of us from St. Luke’s joined with 7,000 others for the week-long New Wine Summer Conference camping at the Newark & Nottinghamshire County Showground at the end of July. This is the fourth year that a group from St. Luke’s has attended. Despite the title New Wine is not a wine-tasting event. New Wine is a large multi-denominational network of Christian churches throughout the land and beyond that are seeking to bring transformation to individual lives, our communities and our nation.

The main speaker at the morning Bible studies this year was Simon Guillebaud who is a missionary working in war-torn Burundi in Africa. He presented a series of deeply scriptural and challenging talks about the call of Jesus to follow him no matter what the cost to our personal lives. It was deeply humbling, yet also inspiring, to see the fearful conditions he and his family have to work in. The war in Burundi has officially ended, yet atrocities are still being committed regularly against people in the areas he visits and takes the Gospel to. His call not merely to exist but to truly live had an authenticity backed up by his own lifestyle and the constant dangers he faces. He has put his life on the line for the cause of God’s kingdom.

Such are the vagaries of our weather these days, on the Wednesday, a sunny and warm morning, some of us witnessed a mini tornado as it ripped through part of the site just 30m from us. It relocated a few tents, mangled some gazebos and lifted a paddling pool way up into the sky about 100 feet or more and carried it away. An extraordinary sight; and mercifully no one was hurt at all. Providentially, a child had been removed the paddling pool moments before.

New Wine is a great experience and well worth spending a week of your holiday on. Most people take tents and caravans and that is also a truly enjoyable part of the experience, but you don’t have to camp. Plenty choose to do B&B in the vicinity. Why not consider coming to next year’s conference?

New Wine 2012 runs from July 28th to August 3rd. Take a look at the New Wine website at www.new-wine.org