ADVENT PASTORAL LETTER
Dear friends within the community of St Paul’s Church, Ipswich.
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It has been my privilege to serve as your locum priest since May this year, and as we now commence a new church year with Advent Sunday, I want to reach out to all members of our parish community. If I have not yet had an opportunity to meet you at one of our Sunday services, I hope we may get to meet during the next few weeks. Please do introduce yourself to me, as I will not necessarily know who is a visitor and who is a long term member of our faith community.
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Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, so it varies in length from one year to another. This year it will be exactly 24 days, since Advent Sunday is 1 December.
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During these 24 days of grace we are invited to reflect on the deeper meaning of Christmas and especially the mystery of Emmanuel, God with us in the person of Jesus. The candles of the advent wreath represent the great themes of our faith: Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. Those are key spiritual attributes in our own lives, but they are also much needed blessings in the wider society and the world beyond. Hope. Peace. Joy. Love. Come, Lord Jesus!
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I would encourage you to set up an Advent Wreath in your home and perhaps also an Advent Calendar. You will find some tips on how to do this on the church website.
You will see that we have a series of special events during Advent:
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1 December – Advent Carols Service
8 December – Carols on the Lawn
22 December – Nine Lessons & Carols
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Our services for Christmas at St Paul’s Church will be:
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Christmas Eve, 6.00pm – Family Service
Christmas Eve, 11.30pm – Midnight Eucharist
Christmas Day, 8.30am – Holy Communion
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I especially commend the Christmas Bowl Appeal to you as a wonderful way to make gift that changes lives for so many people. Please make your gift via the dedicated donations page for St Paul’s Church Ipswich on the Christmas Bowl website, as that way we can see how much we have raised together.
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The parish is currently in a transitional phase as we continue the search for our next Rector. It is possible that an announcement may be made very soon, but for now we simply continue to wait and pray for all those involved in the discernment process. You may like to use this beautiful prayer:
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Bountiful God,
give this parish a faithful pastor
who will faithfully speak your word
and minister your sacraments;
an encourager,
who will equip your people for ministry
and enable us to fulfil our calling.
Give to those who will choose,
wisdom, discernment and patience,
and to us give warm and generous hearts,
for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.
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Another exciting development is that we are hoping to begin work shortly on the installation of a high-speed WIFI network across the whole St Paul’s site, including the church and the Parish Hall. This will allow us to have CCTV cameras in the grounds and inside the church to improve security and it will also provide for high quality livestreaming of Sunday services and other special occasions such as Baptisms and Funerals. Most weeks we have several hundred people looking at the video from our Sunday service, so we want to develop that digital outreach to people who are unable to join us in person.
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We also anticipate the Parish of St Paul Ipswich and the Parish of North Ipswich will combine to form a single new Anglican ministry unit in the heart of Ipswich from the beginning of 2025. This will be the culmination a long period of time during which our two parishes have increasingly worked together, and it means that we shall then serve the local community as a single parish with two churches. I commend the following prayer for your use in the coming weeks as we prepare for this major change.
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God of new beginnings,
bless our Ipswich Anglican community
with a fresh vision for the future,
with generous hearts to love one another,
and with courage for the changes we now embrace.
Draw us more deeply into the mystery of Christ,
so that we draw closer to you and to each other.
Make us a blessing to the city of Ipswich
as we walk together
into the future you have prepared for us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
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During the past few months we have been reviewing our ministry with those families who have young children. We often first connect with these families when they ask to have a child baptised, so we have developed the faith@HOME project to support them as families in the spiritual nurture of their children. You may like to check out the dedicated page for that program on the church website and share it with family and friends.
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I wish you every blessing for the coming Advent and Christmas. Thank you for being part of our faith community at St Paul’s Church.
Greg Jenks
Locum Rector