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Moseley Chimes
January 2008
Welcome to our new monthly magazine, ‘Moseley Chimes’ — ringing out God’s good news in our community. If you’re choosing a name for a child, a house or magazine, it’s often a time consuming process - not only will the person or place be labelled with it for ever but what message does it give out; it’s an important process. When the magazine team were looking at what we were going to produce, we wanted something that rang something positive in peoples’ minds, after all in a world where the media tell us of such sadness, it’s essential that God still has some good news for us! Our bell ringers call us to worship each week and the aim of Moseley Chimes is to tell everyone about what God is doing through St Mary’s and St Anne’s; in response to the Chimes, I hope people will be called to join us and come to find Christ’s liberating love and worship him — after all that is the main reason why we all exist.
At Christmas we hear of the story of the Angel Gabriel telling Mary what name they should give her child. Emmanuel means God with us, Yeshua in Hebrew or Jesus as it is translated, is the name which means God is help but it speaks of so many things Love, Peace and Mercy. In its darkness, the World needs to hear that name as it cries for help and nowhere more recently has that been felt by supporters of Gillian Fisher who was wrongfully convicted for naming a teddy bear Mohammed. The name and values of Jesus Christ stand for forgiveness, tolerance and respect; at Christmas that needs to be held up high as we remember the reason that Christ was born to redeem and not condemn humanity.
In the coming seasons of Christmas and Epiphany we will be celebrating the difference that Christ’s presence brings in our lives. Turning water into wine, poverty into gladness, sorrow into joy, despair into hope and through our ministry we can do that today. As we enter a New Year when Jesus’ name is formally proclaimed, there is much to announce in what lies ahead in the next few months. Spiritually we will be looking forward to a renewal of our children’s work and in Lent, our prayer life; during this time we be asked to put aside all our day to day activity and focus on how God can turn our somewhat busy ordinariness into being Holy People as well as continuing to pursue our pilgrimage of finding our vocation and purpose to be Christ’s body, the word made flesh in us incarnate, here on earth today! Physically we will be looking forward to developing our range of services to meet people at the places and times where they kind find Christ; our Wednesday Worship with Moseley Church of England School is just one example of how we are achieving this. Building wise we have formed a team to carry out a radical review of security and safety (following an excellent training day in December), the tower clock at St Mary’s will be restored in March and April, new notice boards and hopefully refurbished toilets and a kitchen at St Mary’s will take place later in the year. To ensure that we can meet the day to day running of the Church, we will be having a Stewardship Renewal Sunday on 27 January.
Ding Dong Merrily on High — the bells in heaven and earth will be ringing with Good News this Christmas, celebrating the birth of Christ; we are witnesses of Christ’s presence let us proclaim it — may Moseley Chimes be the sound to communicate our hope and joy in the name of Christ to all in Moseley. With God’s blessing to you this Christmas and thanks for the many people who have given me love and support over this first year.