Christmas will soon be be upon us and the ‘Christmas Service Schedule’ is shaping up nicely.
Please do join us again this year as we journey towards Bethelehem and the birth of our Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
It’s always a good idea to come along early to some of these services in order to get a seat.
We look forward to welcoming you!
Baptisms, Weddings and the Small Church Hall can be booked in person at the Church on a Wednesday evening between 6.30pm and 7.30pm. The Large Church Hall can be booking by phoning Foresight on 01472 269666.
Fr Edward Martin (Rector of Scartho)
Wedding season is now upon us with 
between 30 and 40 weddings this year (we’re still getting bookings and last year we had a wedding at just over 10 days notice!). Don’t forget that if you’d like to book at Wedding at St Giles with St Matthew you’ll need to pop down to the Church on a Wednesday evening between 6.30pm and 7.30pm. A non-refundable desposit of £50 secures any booking. It’s usually adviseable to book your reception and work backwards from there! Please note that we don’t have weddings on bank holidays and Friday is the Rector’s day off (it’s his one day off each week, he’s married and would like to remain so!). Why not pop in and see us or give the Rector a call.
Please note that from now on the Large Church Hall is available at an hourly rate of £15 per hour and the Small Hall for £12 per hour (your booking must include setting-up and clearing-away time). Both Halls can be booked by phoning the Parish Office on 01472 872482. These prices are valid for 2012/13.
Thank you,
Fr Edward Martin (Rector of Scartho)
Christmas is coming and here are our Christmas Services for 2011. Please note that the Choir will sing from 6.30pm before the Carol Service begings on Wednesday 21st Decemeber.
We hope to see you in Church over the Christmas period! Why not come along and bring a friend? It really isn’t Christmas unless you’ve been to Church!
To ‘rail’ or not to ‘rail’ – that is the question!
I have to say that I’ve never given a great deal of thought to the question of ‘altar rails’. Some Churches have them, others don’t, and I usually
take things as I find them. My natural inclination would be to knee to receive
Holy Communion but, as I’m most often the celebrant, I only really get to do
this once or twice a year when I’m on holiday (if the Church in question has rails!).
Why then, do I raise this issue?
Over the last year or so we’ve been developing a plan to re-order the Chancel at St Giles with St Matthew. The idea was to bring the celebration closer to the congregation to aid participation and also to reduce the distance people had to walk to receive Communion. We wanted to make all this possible but without fundamentally changing the way that the Church looked – a big ask you might think!
What I imagined (and proposed) to the PCC was a plan to add a semi-circular extension to the Chancel step, to reduce (or scale-back) of the Choir furniture and then introduce a nave altar with together removable altar rails.
Things continued apace and various ‘learning curves’ were hit as we steered the plans through the Faculty process (hello to members of the English Heritage and the 20th Century Society!). But it wasn’t until the work started to happen that the ‘problems’ started to reveal themselves. Rather foolishly (I realise this now!) I went on retreat while the work began and when I returned I soon realised that the extension to the Chancel step needed to come out by at least another foot and that the proposed altar rails didn’t fit the size and scale of what we were creating – they looked terribly out of place. Fortunately, and with grateful thanks to all involved, we managed to call everything to a halt and to re-assess and make the necessary changes whilst negotiating our way around Sunday services, Weddings and Baptisms.
The step-extension was brought out by another foot and I resisted (wisely as it turned out) my inclination to cut a further inch-and-a-half off of the bottom of the new altar (we got it in a sale!!!). When all was completed the altar rails still didn’t work (I got that sinking feeling in my stomach) and I began to think about alternatives – longer, higher, different design etc. However, any further change would be out of the question if the carpet (which was about to arrive was cut to accommodate the rails as they currently stood. So, I decided to put the altar rail issue ‘on ice’ and go ahead with the carpet and see what happened….
The result was somewhat unexpected!
Suddenly, we had wonderful ‘open space’ in front of the choir stalls and plenty of room to accommodate the new altar (which finally began to look like it might belong in the Church) together with the lectern and font. The absence of the proposed rails also seemed to temper one of the most challenging features of the Church building as, quite literally, nothing lines up! The Chancel doesn’t line up with the nave roof, the centre aisle doesn’t line up with the Chancel or with the Tower arch (which doesn’t line up with the window in the west wall of the Tower…). Somehow, the curve of the new Chancel step seems to bring everything together. Great! But, now to the ‘tricky bit’…
So, what do we do now?
Well, my suggestion (at least for the moment) is to try life without altar rails at the Sunday 10am service. If people can kneel unassisted then they are free to do so. For others, the intention will be to stand to receive Communion (something that a number of people do already). On the plus side, this might help us to distribute Communion more quickly and efficiently (something that has been a bit of a worry). It’s certainly not an ‘unknown quantity’ to some members of the congregation as the former St Matthew’s Church never had rails and Communion is received standing on a Tuesday evening at 7pm.
Really, I think there are plenty of reasons / arguments either way but my ‘gut feeling’ is that, in this context, it may be as well to do without them. Time will tell!
Fr Edward
What do you do with a leaning monument? Good question! It’s something the PCC are currently having to act upon and there are no easy solutions. The monument in question dates from the early 20th century and has been ‘inclining’ towards the path for some time (albeit very ‘gently’). After a recentOver the years the Crib Service has become a splendid opportunity to go a little OTT in the pursuit of the Christmas Story. Having based last years’ service on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’, this year I enlisted the help of Anne Robinson and ‘The Weakest Link’. Instead of using the ‘physical crib’ figures (which are quite fragile) I opted to include within the power-point presentation the building of a ‘virtual crib’. Better still, the virtual crib figures were animated pictures so they actually moved from time to time!
The service itself was packed-out and tremendous fun, if not a little hectic! It was great to see so many children and so many new faces. To say that people were enthusiastically shouting out the answers would be a bit of an understatement and it was a bit of a job at times to keep the whole enterprise under control (duly noted for next year!). The highlight came at the end of the service when the lights were dimmed, candles lit and we sang the ‘Though the shadows gather…’ the wonderful (!) Christmas ‘song’ set to the tune of ‘Is this the way to Amarillo?’ by Toni Christie. We sang it to a thumping karaoke backing track and folk were still singing it as they walked out into the snow!
This year I felt the ‘Lessons & Carols’ needed something of an overhaul and, having invested in a book by Nick Fawcett called ’Refective Services for Advent and Christmas’, I decided to use his suggested pattern of Biblical readings followed by ‘Talking Heads’ sytle monologues that brought out some of the themes from the readings. It felt like a bit of a gamble, but the material was really impressive and those who read over it for me were really encouraging. I also wondered if it might be particularly appropriate as there appears to be something of a concerted effort within the media (and society in general) to reflect on the ‘deeper meaning’ of Christmas this year – perhaps in the ake of the recession? With numbers a little down following the recent snow and ice I did worry about attendance, but the Choir found themselves with a half-full Church while they were still rehearsing for their advertised 6.40pm start! By 7.00pm the Church was full with over 100 people crammed in. I don’t think I couldn’t have wished for a better evening; the singing was superb and the readings were well received. The reaction ‘on the door’ afterwards was very positive and quite a few folk opted to take the service booklets home for further use and reflection. I’m beginning to wonder if Nick Fawcett might not be the new Susan Sayers?
Last night saw our ‘Quiet Service for Christmas’. I have to admit that this is something I’ve always been a little hesitant about because it tries to deal with a whole variety of possible emotions and experiences ‘all in one go’ and at a very sensitive time of year. The structure and contents were developed from a version made available on the Lincoln Diocesan website. It involves singing O Little Town of Bethlehem in sections and centres around a Litany that leads to candle-lighting as a liturgical action that symbolises and gives shape to the thoughts, feelings and prayers of those who take part. This year I wanted to avoid any sense of the service being ‘All Souls II’ or ‘All Souls at Christmas’ so we invested in a new votive light candle stand called ‘The Tree of Light’ from Kevin Mayhew. It certainly had the desired effect and the small congregation (numbers are usually 20 to 30) watched as music quietly played and the candles they had lit flickered before the altar. Like some funerals, this is always a service where it’s difficult to tell if you’ve really met peoples’ needs or expectations, but if the atmosphere that accompanied the candle-lighting was anything to go by then I don’t think we were too far off the mark.
