Praise and prayerful gifts for our neighbours

The members of our CT group are Seascale Methodist Church, Gosforth Methodist Congregation (worshipping in St Mary’s Church Room), St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Seascale, and Anglican churches from Beckermet in the north to Waberthwaite in the south, and inland to Wasdale Head and Eskdale. (Not all of these send representatives to our committee meetings, and the main focus tends to be Drigg, Seascale and Gosforth.)

Over the years we have held outreach activities such as giving out mince pies at Christmas or hot cross buns at Easter, always with a short gospel message on a napkin or leaflet. When people ask, ‘Are you collecting for something?’ it is good to be able to reply, ‘No, it’s a gift from your local churches.’ Local knitters have made duck-shaped bags in which we have given out chocolate eggs, and craftspeople have made pottery crosses which have also been distributed in the villages.

In recent years a very fruitful partnership has developed with Phoenix Praise worship band, who hold a monthly evening service in Gosforth. Three or four times a year (eg Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, an outdoor Pentecost service and an autumn service in the former One World Week) these become joint events with Churches Together, with publicity across the area and usually a visiting speaker. Our (fairly brief) Annual Meeting has sometimes been followed by a speaker, but in recent years has featured a quiz based on the format of TV quizzes (Only Connect and House of Games) but with church- and Bible-based questions.

Jonathan Falkner, Secretary, (pictured far right, above, with fellow CT-ers Sheila, Allison and Hannah, at a group meeting at St Peter’s, Drigg, earlier this year)