Last Autumn, we announced that the members of the church voted to leave the Methodist Church of Great Britain denomination. This is proving to be a long drawn out process and we are looking to God to bring about a satisfactory or even miraculous outcome..
The decision has been made to close Eastington Methodist Church but we have been clear from the outset that the transformation from the current church to the new one should be done in such a way as to maintain the work and witness of the church within Eastington and the surrounding area with as little disruption as possible.
A particular issue is the future ownership of the building where the church at the denominational level is determined to prevent the building going with us. How this will pan out will depend quite heavily on what our local Gloucestershire Circuit decides to do and there is a critical Circuit Assembly meeting happening just 3 days after the press date for this Eastington Community News.
Hopefully there will be some clarity soon as to the timescales and whether or not we will have to face the challenge of buying back the building at “full market value” even though it would have originally been paid for by our predecessors here at Eastington. If there is an attempt to get planning permission to knock the building down and redevelop the site, and thereby displace the activities that take place there, we hope there will be vigorous local opposition.
In the meantime, the life of the church goes on. At our 12th June Café Church we will be learning about the Holy Spirit who came down upon Jesus’ followers at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is still active in Jesus’ followers today. His presence is very tangible at times and His involvement in our lives can cause truly amazing things to happen. The presence of the Holy Spirit confirms within the hearts of Christians everywhere that what they believe isn’t a myth or some nonsense made up by ignorant predecessors who were easily fooled into believing just about anything.
At our 10th July Café Church, we will be looking at family trees including that of Jesus. Although Jesus was the Son of God and God was His father, he was placed within the earthly family context of Mary and Joseph.
The Café Church services start with hot and cold drinks and finish with cakes. Everyone is welcome and there is something for all age groups to engage with.
Youth Club
For the first time in 3 years, we were able to take a small group of young people to Spring Harvest at Minehead albeit for only one day on Tuesday 19th April. It involved an early start to enable us to attend the morning sessions. This was followed by a free afternoon to take advantage of the Butlins facilities (principally the swimming pool this time) and then the evening session. We got back a little after 11pm.
We expect youth club to be running every Friday throughout June and July except for Friday 3rd June which is part of the Platinum Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend. Some weeks may find us at the OHMG Snakey Lane park/field for some of the evening and if we get some hot weather, we may deploy the water slide!
We would like to hear from anyone interested in helping us run the youth club.
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