Lucy, Hannah Blakey, Amy Busby, Tony Hill, Madeleine Chapman, Irene Pitman, Liz Blakey, Margaret and John Guy and the soul of their daughter Amanda who died tragically last week, Anna and Jihad married at St Anne’s yesterday.
Georgia Greenburgh (9th), Richard Brown, Rebecca Doyle, Graham Pratt and Debbie Barwell (11th), and Alison Allen (13th).
Gift Aid: If you are a taxpayer, please maximise your giving in the Offertory Plate by using the Gift Aid envelopes provided.
Between now and the end of September, members of the Ministry Team may be taking annual leave. If you need to speak to anyone, try their usual numbers and if unavailable then contact the Benefice Office. This answer phone will be checked regularly and detals passed to the appropriate person. (Please note emails may not be answered for some weeks, again contact the Benefice Office)
St Mary’s notices can be sent to the Parish Office at info@stmarysmoseley.co.uk, or by phone: 0121 449 2243 (mornings) by 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday. Voicemail messages can be left at any time. Also see http://www.stmarysmoseley.co.uk.
St Anne’s notices can be sent to Revd Rosemary Donovan at info@st-annes-moseley.org.uk, or by phone: 0121 449 1071 by Thursday. Also see http://www.st-annes-moseley.org.uk.
St Mary’s has a loop system for the hard of hearing, in the centre block of seats. Turn your hearing aid to the ‘T’ setting.
During the summer when there are no children’s groups, families are welcome to use the family worship zones so that they can take part in the services together. Alternatively for little children the crèche room can be used, but children must be supervised at all times by their parents or guardians. Happy summer holidays to all our children and their leaders and helpers! Groups recommence on 6 September.
The groups have now finished for the summer. Thanks to all leaders and helpers for their hard work during the summer. Please make use of the family zones during this period. Groups recommence on 6 September.
The Youth Group which meets on Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. at St Mary’s will not meet again until 16 September.
Once a month from April to October we will be holding a group during the 10:00 a.m. service at St Mary’s (the same time as the Children’s Sunday Groups) and hope that you may be able to join us.
The dates and titles of the sessions are:
| Date | Subject |
|---|---|
| Sun-26-Apr | What do we believe? |
| Sun-May-17 | Knowing Jesus Christ |
| Sun-14-June | Come Holy Spirit |
| Sun-12-Jul | Knowing the Bible and praying |
| Sun-9-Aug | Holy Communion |
| Sun-13-Sep | Belonging to a Church Community |
| Sun-11-Oct | Getting ready for Confirmation |
| Sun-18-Oct | Confirmation led by Bishop David |
We’ve also creating a group to look at the above subjects. Dates and times to be announced.
If you would like to join the groups to consider confirmation or know more about the Christian Faith, then let us know: info@stmarysmoseley.co.uk or contact Jeremy (449 1459) or Rosemary (449 1071).
…would like to thank everyone who has supported them with prayer and messages of encouragement through the past months, and also all those who have worked extra hard to keep the office running efficiently, especially Janet, Jonathan and the team of Church Watchers. Ann hopes to be back in the office from next week on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
| Service | First Reading | Second Reading |
|---|---|---|
| All | Ephesians 3:25-5:2 | John 6:35; 4151 Matthew 7:24-29 (St Mary’s) |
| Time | St Mary’s | St Anne’s |
|---|---|---|
| 8:00 a.m. | Holy Communion Celebrant and Preacher: Revd Jeremy Dussek |
|
| 10:00 a.m. | Sung Eucharist Celebrant: Revd Jeremy Dussek Preacher: Lis Sparrow |
|
| 10:15 a.m. | Community Worship With baptism of Thomas Wood Officiants: Revd Rosemary Donovan & Elisabeth Leicester |
|
| 6:30 p.m. | Taizé Style Worship Officiant: Mick Perrier |
| Day | Time | St Mary’s | St Anne’s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesdays | 9:00 a.m. | Holy Communion | |
| Wednesdays | 9:00 a.m. | Morning Prayer |
| Time | St Mary’s | St Anne’s |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday 16 August | ||
| 8:00 a.m. | Holy Communion | |
| 10:00 a.m. | Sung Eucharist | |
| 10:15 a.m. | Sung Eucharist | |
| 6:30 p.m. | Celtic Service | |
| Sunday 23 August | ||
| 8:00 a.m. | Holy Communion | |
| 10:00 a.m. | Sung Eucharist | |
| 10:15 a.m. | Matins | |
| 6:30 p.m. | Healing Service | |
| Sunday 30 August | ||
| 8:00 a.m. | Holy Communion | |
| 10:00 a.m. | Sung Eucharist | |
| 10:15 a.m. | Sung Eucharist | |
| 6:30 p.m. | Modern Language Evensong | |
| Sunday 6 September | ||
| 8:00 a.m. | Holy Communion | |
| 10:00 a.m. | Patronal Festival | |
| 6:30 p.m. | Choral Evensong | |
| 6:30 p.m. | Evensong | |
See also: Calendar of Future Events
| Date | Time | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Fri-14-Aug | 7:00 p.m. | The Burma Play Theatre of Birmingham Central Library. You can view details of this play at www.theburmaplay.com. It is performed by The Northern International Theatre and sponsored by the Co-operative Society. For details or tickets please contact John Bodycote (bodycote@uwclub.net) 0121 458 2420 or Martin Bate (martintombate@yahoo.co.uk) 0121 433 3592. |
| Wed-19-Aug | 11:00 a.m. | Outing to Hop Pocket Craft Centre, Worcester. There are still seats available for this trip, which departs from St Anne’s at 11:00 a.m. Cost £10 plus cost of lunch if required. Names and a contact number to Julia 441 2265 by 12 August please. |
The words I have just spoken are the opening lines to a hymn that inspired me during my teenage years. I never sang the hymn but found it during a boring sermon! I hope today you don’t feel a need to flick through your hymn book but if you do, it maybe that God is also trying to inspire you.
Today, we begin our summer talks on Science and Faith. Over the coming weeks we will hear from John Dowell / John Gary looking from a scientific viewpoint and Martin Miller / Fred Burrows from a medical viewpoint. This morning I would like to explore Engineering and Faith or Finding God in Concrete.
As many of you are aware, for the last 20 years I have been a structural engineer. Basically I design buildings to stand up, before an architect makes them warm and pretty! Over the years, I have designed many different buildings, including TK Max in Birmingham City Centre, Good Hope Hospital Out Patients and many Homebases and Comets up an down the country. I have also spent time on site, including 18 months working on the construction of the M60 Manchester Ring Road.
I believe my leaning towards engineering started a lot earlier than this. It was probably first noticed by others when my sister was born. Apparently when I went to visit her in hospital, I acknowledge she existed, before spending the rest of the time investigating how Mum’s bed worked. My interest continued through childhood, with me enjoying Lego and designing the layout of the rooms in our dolls house. This was rather than playing with the dolls, much to the annoyance of my sister.
It was in the third year of secondary school that I knew I wanted to be a structural engineer. I had chosen to do technical drawing and craft, design and technology, all one subject in those days, when we were given for our Christmas homework to draw the church towers of the local town. From then on my academic studies were engineering and construction based. Looking back on it, God got in on act even then, steering my vocation into engineering.
Although not all Christians would agree with this thought; some feel being an Engineer and a Christian are incompatible including two former members of St Mary’s. They felt my involvement in road building was unchristian because in their eyes I was wrecking the environment.
Using the advice of my open evangelical friends over at Lickey Church I will begin to rebut this opinion by using the Bible. In the Old Testament there are many builders, although not always doing God’s will. One who did was of course Noah. I suggest God didn’t choose Noah because of his knitting skills but because he probably spent all his time in his shed making something; much to the annoyance of Mrs Noah I suspect. We also have Nebuchadnezzar, who I learnt about at technical college. He introduced the first building regulations. If a building you constructed fell down and someone was killed, you were put to death. Today the law is less draconian although for a similar incident I could go to prison guilty of manslaughter.
Moving to the New Testament, as well as sheep, Jesus used construction in his parables. For example, a childhood favourite of mine is today’s gospel reading, the parable of the foolish man who built his house on the sand and the wise man who built his house on the rock. Jesus knew what he was talking about, because looking from an engineering point of view, sand is a strong material to build on as long as it’s contained. However once things get a bit dodgy, fall away and water gets in, it becomes quicksand and you rapidly start to sink.
My final Biblical example is God himself. He created the world, the ultimate structural engineer. A tree is a highly efficient structure but also very beautiful. The nearest we can get to this is a suspension bridge, the London Eye or railway station roof. I’m thinking Bristol Temple Meads here not Birmingham New Street! These structures are elegant and need nothing more to be added; well in my opinion anyway!
God also created us in his image. For us to fulfil this potential we have to use our gifts and skills and find our vocation. I believe this includes the skills and gifts suitable for engineering, provided they are used responsibly and for the greater good. For example engineers in natural disasters save more lives by reconnecting the sewerage system and clean water supply than any doctor or scientist. However this does not always happen; engineers are also enablers in some of the worst atrocities the world has seen including, designing an agonisingly slow method of killing someone called crucifying, the Gas Chambers at the Nazi’s extermination camps and the wall built to divide the people of Israel and Palestine.
The responsibility and use of a design or method of construction doesn’t solely lie with the engineer but with all of us. I pose the question, in a culture where we want the cheapest and quickest whether its baked beans or using a rat run to get home quicker, how do each of our actions reflect God’s image?
So far I have concentrated on what engineers do but as a Christian we should live and breathe our faith. Engineers are very good at doing but not so good at being. That is the soft skills and the emotional side of our person, listening to our hearts as well as our heads. As an industry the soft skills can be seen as unnecessary or weak.
I suggest this is because we work with very black and white facts and in a male dominated environment where a strong macho persona must be maintained by all.
As engineer’s we communicate our thoughts and ideas through numbers and drawings using the least words possible and of course with no feeling or emotion. Too many words are discouraged, especially flowery language, because it can cause confusion and possibly give room for a financial claim against you. Also the less interpretation required means there is a good chance the structure will be built as envisaged.
The male dominance of the office generally means not talking about things outside work, except of course football! More specific examples I have encountered include, in my first job after graduating, where it took me a year for people to say good morning to me. More recently when a large number of people were made redundant in our office, colleagues would rather say nothing than say something and possibly put their foot in it. This made the atmosphere in the office both morbid and tense. I did talk to those who were facing redundancy and this was deemed as inferring by some of my colleagues who still had their jobs or an extra over personal thing not part of our job description.
It is not as bleak a picture as it may appear, the men I work with do have a heart. I have often found, once you scratch below the surface, care, empathy and support are there and shared, if a little awkwardly at times.
I hope you can see God can be found in concrete but like most concrete structures he may not always obvious. Engineers often cover God behind a facade of another product, you are unlikely to find G.O.D. emblazoned across a building. Nor will you find someone talking about their faith in the office or on site. But God is there, even if a bit of digging is required.
For me, over the last few years God has not allowed me to keep my soft side hidden. With a lot of support from you, I have started to explore the being side of me and my faith. It hasn’t always been comfortable; there are no black or white answers or a definable product at the end. It is a side of me that I now embrace and fear with equal measures.
Through this exploration or discernment as the church calls it, I feel and others now concur, that God is calling me from the vocation of engineering to the vocation of the ordained ministry. A vocation where, as Archbishop Ramsay said, I need to be with God with the people on my heart and with the people with God on my heart. In the future my technical knowledge of engineering may not be needed, except for perhaps the infamous reordering and quinquennial surveys of church buildings. However I do feel my past vocation in engineering will always be there to colour my being and my doing, allowing me to find God in the concrete.
Amen.
Almighty God, who sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your Church: open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love and joy and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.