Can you believe the summer is drawing to a close and we are about to embark on another church year? I hope you have been able to find time to rest and recharge your batteries over the summer, even if the weather has been less than kind to us. Certainly, Julia and I enjoyed our break and we now approach another year refreshed and excited at what the Lord has in store for us as a church in the coming months.
This has also been a significant summer for Michelle Hutchinson. If you are wondering who Michelle Hutchinson is, she is the person we used to know as Michelle Mullan. Michelle married Richard Hutchinson on Tuesday 20th August in our church. I know you will want to join with me in asking for God’s richest blessing for Richard and Michelle. It was a privilege to be able to officiate at their wedding and we look forward to seeing them both worship with us in weeks, months and indeed years ahead.
We have a number of other people getting married in the coming weeks. John Sinclair (a nephew of Mary Sinclair) is marrying Emily Menzies on Monday 26th of August, Rebecca Lemon is marrying Jeff McCormick on the 20th of September and Corey McDowell (Maureen McDowell’s grandson) is marrying Jess French on the 1st of November.
We wish each of these couples God’s richest blessing and I would encourage each of us to commit to pray for them, not just in the run up to their wedding day, but to continue to pray as they build new lives together.
September brings the restarting of much of church life. The GB registration evening will be on Wednesday 28thof August and the first official GB evening will be Wednesday 4thof September. The GB are encouraging girls to register online to help speed up this process. You can do this on the church website by either following the link to the GB page, or using the link in the latest GB update in the blog section of the website (www.portstewartpresbyterian.org) . Alternatively check the GB or the Church Facebook page.
The Sunday evening Prayer and Praise service will begin again on Sunday 1stof September and the congregational bible study on Thursday 5thof September. If you have never been to either of these then could I encourage you to consider coming along this autumn. The Christian life is not a life to be led in isolation, it is a call to be part of a redeemed community of God’s people. We are to meet together for worship Sunday by Sunday, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing… (Hebrews 10:25) We are also to meet together for prayer…devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful…(Colossians 4:2) The Prayer and Praise service along with the Bible Study are opportunities to be obedient to God’s word, but they are not places where anyone will be put under pressure or made to feel uncomfortable.
In September we will begin a new series on the book of Acts which will take us some time to work through, although we will do this in short bite sized segments. Acts gives a wonderful picture of how the early church came together and grew, despite some quite horrendous persecution. This is a preaching series the elders have asked for as they try to help us understand what it means for us to live out our mission statement that we worship God, serve our community and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In September we will also be relaunching our youth fellowship which will be called established. We have taken Ephesians 3: 17, being rooted and established in love our young people may have the power to grasp how wide, and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. We want to create an environment where our young people are discipled and encouraged to deepen understanding and indeed commitment to Christ. We want to see them established in the church and in their faith. If you have young people of secondary school age, then please do encourage them to come along to this on the 2nd and 4th Sunday evenings of the month. We will have more promotional material coming shortly for this.
This of course is only a snapshot of what is starting up again. To keep fully abreast of what is happening keep an eye on our website, social media and the printed announcement sheets which are issued Sunday by Sunday. If you miss a week and want an announcement sheet, they are normally available to download alongside the recording of the service each week. https://www.portstewartpresbyterian.org/sermons/
As always it is with sadness that we report the deaths of much-loved members of our congregation since I last wrote to you.
Doreen Boyd died on the 27th of April 2024
Margaret Logan died on the 28th of May 2024
Kathleen Stewart died on the 20th of June 2024
Edna McFarland died on the 26th of June 2024
Phyllis McKergan died on the 9th of July 2024
Jean Wallace died on the 12th of July 2024
Noel Johnston died on the 15th of July 2024
Please do continue to pray for those who mourn. Each name listed represents a family still struggling to come to terms with death of a loved one. Ask that God by his Spirit would bring the comfort and hope that is only found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We have also had cause to celebrate, especially due to the baptism of Esme Poppy Nicholl who was baptised on Sunday 23rd June. Esme will be familiar to many of you as she has taken her place at the front of the church while her mum Samantha helps lead us in worship. Continue to give thanks for Esme, and all our children, and pray that they would grow in their knowledge and understanding of the Lord.
I hope you are looking forward to the new church year. I hope you are excited because of what God is doing amongst us. Please do continue to pray for our church. Pray that we would grow, not only in numbers, but also in the depth of our faith. If it has been a while since you’ve been out with us, or if you have never been, then why not make this September a time to come and be part of our family once more, or even better – to join us for the first time.
Our prayer and praise services return on Sunday the 1st September at 6:30 pm in the church Centenary Room.
This service has been incredibly popular over the last year providing an opportunity for people to come together in an informal setting to simply sing in praise of God and spend time in prayer.
The format of the service is based on our church mission statement that we are a Presbyterian congregation who worship God, serve our community and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. Each week we focus on a different part of church life celebrating how we worship God and seeking God’s will and equipping as each ministry serves the community and proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old; have been coming to church all your life or if it’s a while since you’ve visited; or maybe you’ve never been to church before, this is a service for everyone. So why not come along on Sunday 1st September at 6:30 pm.
The ending of a holiday and getting back to the routine of life is an opportunity to make significant lifestyle changes. With this new beginning can come new prayers, a cry to God that this season would be different from the last, that life would take a step forward.
Over the next two weeks we will be thinking about how we can know God through these prayers. We will be looking at two very different examples of how God meets us in our prayers.
On Sunday 18th August we will meet a man call Jairus whose daughter was desperately ill. Jairus sent messengers to Jesus asking that he would come and heal his daughter, and after some delays, Jesus responded and the girl was restored. (Read Luke 8: 40-56)
Then on Sunday 25th August we will read about a very different expereince of prayer. The Apostle Paul, known for incredible displays of God’s power and numerous examples of people being healed through him, yet in his personal life we’re told that he prayed three times for a thorn in the flesh to be removed. There was something in his life he desperatly wanted to be rid off but God did not grant his prayer. Even in this unanswered prayer Paul met God in an incredibly powerful way. (Read 2 Corinthians 12: 1-10)
So, whether you have been praying for years and it seems as though God has not answered, or you’ve been astounded because in truth you didn’t expect God to answer, but he did, why not come along on Sunday morning at 10:30 and discover how we know God through all our prayers.
Stuart is back from holiday and will be leading us in worship and in our thinking.
It’s been a busy few weeks in Portstewart Presbyterian Church.
Sophie Hogg and Anna Fell held a coffee morning fundraiser for their summer Exodus team trip raising an incredible £1354.10. Well done girls and thank you to everyone who came along and supported them. Girls, we look forward to commissioning you in church and then hearing from you when you get back home again. In the meantime we will enjoy the photos from your coffee morning.
Just to start things off, I did NOT want to write this. This is only happening because of a series of very unfortunate events in which I made one joke about writing this thing and-oops!- now I actually have to. The moral of the story? Don’t make jokes in a car full of GB leaders, or else you’ll end up writing a newspaper article when you know nothing about writing newspaper articles.
Anyway, you’re probably here to read about that big badminton match we went to; and I’m going to tell you about it from my perspective! What a shocker.
It all began in my house, where I, who knows about as much about badminton as a toddler does about engineering, was about to go to play in a badminton competition. Scary stuff! I was trying not to worry about it too much, you know, just doing things to calm me down. That was when my mum called me down and gave me the worst news of the day; even worse than having to go to school that morning, even worse than reminding me of my physics exam the following week for the TWENTIETH TIME.
I had to put my hair up.
To you, this may seem normal. But not for me. You see, when I put my hair up I tend to look a little bald, especially in photos. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with being bald, but with my facial structure I tend to look more like I’ll be marching in the troops instead of the Girls Brigade. And so, after a back and forth argument over whether I looked like an egg in photos from the age of 3-13, we settled on some pigtails that made me look like I had just leapt out of High School Musical.
I had to put my hair up.
To you, this may seem normal. But not for me. You see, when I put my hair up I tend to look a little bald, especially in photos. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with being bald, but with my facial structure I tend to look more like I’ll be marching in the troops instead of the Girls Brigade. And so, after a back and forth argument over whether I looked like an egg in photos from the age of 3-13, we settled on some pigtails that made me look like I had just leapt out of High School Musical.
That’s when the car pulled up outside. I grabbed my bag, walked out and questioned every decision that got me to this point.
The first bad event of that evening happened in that very car. For some reason I’d put my seatbelt on while also wearing my bag, which led to me spending the entire journey with the mass of two people under one seatbelt. It was thoroughly uncomfortable.
Eventually we made it to the competition, and once we entered the hall where it was taking place I felt like I’d been swept up by a tsunami of girls, all wearing GB hoodies. Our group was actually the odd one out, only two of us were wearing our hoodies (including me, so haha). Anyway, we had to wait for ages for the thing to actually start, cause they had to go over all the boring stuff like rules and whatever.
And then began what I ever-so-fondly call the ‘Sitting and eating oranges phase’.
It’s kinda in the name, really. We just sat for about half an hour talking and eating Jaffa Cakes and Oranges- though, the oranges were SO GOOD. They were the perfect water to orange ratio, I’d honestly recommend! Oranges aside, we finally ended up playing. I was on Team A (Amazing, Awesome, Actually the best at the game), and the other two were on Team B (Bad, Beastly, BADminton- kidding don’t attack me guys pleaseee!!).
Team A went first, and the game went as you’d expect. We won! I’ll skip most of it cause it wasn’t really interesting.
…Until the 2nd game. We went on, figuring the game would go as normal, but about halfway through the match my teammate HIT A GIRL IN THE EYE WITH THE SHUTTLECOCK. It was a little funny, only a little. And we won that game so, you know, all’s well that ends well.
The 3rd game wasn’t as good though. Apparently the finalists were actually really good at the game, and I was horrible at it, they figured out that I wasn’t as good and you can guess where it went from there…we lost.
WE GOT SECOND THOUGH!!
And maybe we didn’t win, but you know what they say! First is the worst, second is the best, third is the one with the hairy chest.
Thank you for praying for the life of our congregation through 2023. Please do remember there are opportunities for us to pray together on Sunday mornings before the service and at our prayer and praise services on the 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month.
Sunday 17th December
Isaiah 9:4 Thank God that the birth of Jesus is the one single event in the whole of history that will lift all the burden of sin that makes life so difficult at times. Thank God that Jesus birth is also what will end every kind of oppression that is still so evident in our world.
Monday 18th December
Micah 5:4 Thank God that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Take time to remember that the great promise of scripture that we will never be abandoned by the shepherd. Take time today to simply sit in the presence of God, to be aware of his leading, care and love in our lives.
Tuesday 19th December
Isaiah 11:6-9 Christmas is not just about the time when Jesus came to the earth, but a time to look forward to when he will return. Thank God for what will be, the peace and absence of war, death and fear.
Wednesday 20th December
Luke 1:38 Mary offered herself in service to the Lord in an incredible way. Take time today to consider how we might offer ourselves in service to God, the church and one another.
Thursday 21st December
Luke 2:7 Jesus was born into poverty and homelessness. He was a refugee at an early age. Take time to pray for the many people in Gazza, Israel, Ukraine, and many other places across our world who are refugees. Pray for our friends living next door to the church as they spend a Christmas away from their families.
Friday 22nd December
Luke 2:14 It is incredibly easy to let the preparations for Christmas overshadow the meaning of Christmas. Take time today to pause and echo the song of the angels. Give glory to God for all that he has done. Why not list your blessing (count them one by one) and glorify God for all that he has done. Start the list with the fact that Jesus Christ has died for us!
Saturday 23rd December
John 1:5 The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Rejoice, and again I say rejoice that the light of Christ continues to shine in this dark world. In the turmoil, in the pain, in the good and in the celebrations. Thank God for the light of Christ, the hope of Christ and the promise of Christ… Happy Christmas!
