Join us Online: YouTube (from 6am Sunday)

For those who feel safe and would find it a support to come in person to church, then the church is open at 11:00am on Sunday for a communion service.

If you plan to come to in-person church please register!

(You can now book for services through to June 20th, you can either book one week at a time or all the services in one go. We'll take your most recent booking when drawing up the register. So you can always rebook to change what you have said you are doing.)

Register to attend

Also, join us for a chat at 11:30am on Sunday: 

Click this link to join the Zoom meeting.

""I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." (1 John 5:13)

There feels like a lot of hope about at the moment as we approach the next big step in lockdown easing and the prospect of a more full release at the end of June. The prospect of the end of a period which has been so disruptive and challenging is certainly welcome.

Yet, I also sense there is not total confidence that we are reaching the end. After all there were similar hopes last autumn, but the winter turned out to be even worse than many had feared. Also, there is still uncertainty over the threat from the different virus mutations. So the general mood is of uncertain optimism.

As well as this it has been so long since there were no restrictions that it is actually quite hard to imagine a world without the threat of the virus. This struggle to imagine the future can also undermine our confidence.

When it comes to eternal life, we can also find it hard to imagine what it will be like, which can make it feel rather unreal. We can also have our certainty knocked by our own doubts or the ridicule of others. Yet, John says (5:13) that he writes his letter so we can be certain that in Christ we have eternal life. 

The more we engage in the Christ inspired love that we are called to as a Christian community and the more we realise that the gospel message is trustworthy, because it is not just the speculation of politicians or scientists, but the truth from God rooted in the historical life, death and resurrection of His Son, then the more confident we will become.

It is a confidence that will help us through not just the struggles of the Pandemic but all the other difficulties that we face in life. After all eternal life will be a far greater release from our problems that the lifting of lockdown!

Join us this Sunday for the second in our sermon series on 1 John: Love is... This week's talk is: Love is... eternal life (1 John 5:9-13).

The service in church will be Holy Communion.

Please read on...

• Prayer: Urgent: Opener to send in. Thy Kingdom Come links and prayer meetings. The latest prayer requests.
• Care: Reminder of St. Luke's Annual Meeting. Online donations have a new look. Volunteers needed to help clean up St George's hall.
• Share: Last Sunday. St. Luke's Life Stories. Update from Dick and Caroline Seed. Why the Bible still matters. 

Contributions to this week's Opener

URGENT: For this Sunday:  We need people responding to: "God has given us eternal life:" with 

this life is in his Son.

Please send contributions in as soon as possible (by 10am on Friday). You can send them by Whatsapp (07769 871520) or by WeTransfer.com to: [email protected].

Thy Kingdom Come

We started our daily prayer meetings this morning with 7 people - 4 from St. George's and 3 from St. Luke's. The meetings are socially distanced informal daily prayer meetings for 30 minutes from 9:30am to 10:00am in St. George's church until 22nd May, not including Sundays. Everyone is welcome from St. Luke's and St. George's or indeed anyone else!

Check out the page on our website...

Prayer Requests:

​​Be assured I will do my best to check that people are happy for the requests to be shared before including them. Please pray for...

• For peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

• For St. Luke's annual meeting on Tuesday.

• Jean Simmons having a leg amputation operation today.

• Gloria waiting for an appointment after banging her head recently.

• Barb (Gloria's daughter's friend) now finished chemotherapy and having a scan to assess the need for further treatment.

• All the children on Elephant Ward in Great Ormond Street hospital

• Rosemary Ebelthite's cousin's son Grant. He has a new oxygen machine and this has enabled him to go back to work.

• Pauline Emptage awaiting to hear from King's College Hospital about next steps for treating her back.

• Alison's granddaughter, Lexi, who has been diagnosed with a growth on her knee. It looks like it is benign, but please pray that the surgery planned for a few weeks time will be successful and the following biopsy will show it is benign.

• Katrina (Norah's daughter) having tests, because they have found a lump on her lung.

• Joy Smithers. Give thanks for healing. Please pray for effective Physio to help her start moving again.

• Collette Judge who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

• Shirley Crabb that her hip operation can go ahead soon.

• Flo Baldock still having tests and treatment for her stomach, but also struggling with a chest infection.

• Jean Mayton, after a serious bleed on the brain recently. Give thanks that she is showing signs of recovery.

• Nathan Court for his continuing treatment.

• Jeannette (Claudia's sister) undergoing chemotherapy treatment.

Annual Meeting - Tuesday 18th May, 7:30pm

We have set our Annual Meeting for this coming Tuesday. People will be able to attend socially distanced in church or join us on Zoom using the church's normal Zoom link. There is no need to book to come in-person.

This is a great opportunity 'to gather' and celebrate all that God has been doing amongst us even in this difficult year as well as hear about some of the plans for the year to come. We will also be electing two church wardens and three PCC representatives.

The annual report for 2020 and the agenda should be available on the website in the next couple of days. Visit the website for  official notices for the meeting, the electoral roll, which was revised on 4th May 2021 and nomination forms for PCC and Church Warden. The nomination forms also give details of criteria for standing for the PCC or to be a warden.

Click this link to join the Zoom meeting on Tuesday at 7:30pm.

Online donations have a new look

The platform we use to accept online donations has now changed and is easier to use. Simply click the yellow 'Support us with Stewardship' logo on the website (on the main page or under the 'Donate' tab) and it will take you to the St. Luke's giving page. Then select 'Give One Off' and follow the instructions. If you are giving towards a particular project or work at St. Luke's make sure you tell us by using the 'any details or reference' box at the bottom of the first page.

Click the yellow 'button' above to take a look or make a donation.

St. George's Hall Clean Up

In order to enable the work of the Community Meal at St. George's and other groups to use the hall, they are engaging in a clean up and clear out over the next few weeks. We are currently looking at Sundays after 1pm and Tuesday evenings, after 4.30pm. If you are interested in helping out on any occasion, please let me know and I'll put you in contact with the person organising that at St. George's.

Last Week's Talk:

Love is carrying out God's commandments - Available Online

Why should we love other Christians? What does this love look like? How easy is it to love in this way? What has all this to do with true faith? These are questions that 1 John keeps coming back to and answering in slightly different ways as he strengthens our desire to love one another more and more.

St. Luke's Stories

Remember you can use this form to send in your personal reflections on your pandemic experience, which we can then publish. We also welcome mini-autobiographies and poems! Please just email them. In the meantime check out the poems and stories already there...

Update from Dick and Caroline Seed

Dear friends

We had planned to be in the UK in March to May this year, but Covid lockdowns got in the way. We were not sure how remaining in South Africa would work out with no training sessions scheduled during this time, but it has proved invaluable in terms of the amount of preparation we have been able to do.

At the end of February, we still had to write the materials for third phase of the certificate. It took us 6 months to write Phase 1. We only had 4 months to write Phase 3. That has meant writing at almost double the speed. Thankfully, I have now completed 7 units, and Dick is half-way through the 6 units he is writing. We have Phase 3 online sessions booked for Tanzania and Egypt in July & August, respectively.

Other work has come along, with Dick doing three curriculum consultations for colleges in South Africa, Kenya, and South Sudan. Our postgraduate students have been keeping us busy. Primrose, from Zimbabwe, passed her MTh with flying colours and is planning to go on to do a PhD in Practical Theology. Rev Titus from the Organisation of African Instituted Churches in Kenya has been given permission to submit his PhD thesis for examination. He plans to help set up a new theological college for independent churches once he graduates. Other students are in various stages of completion.

We are also preparing for teaching at George Whitefield College (GWC). I will be running a course in postgraduate Research Methods at the beginning of June, and we will co-teach a postgraduate module in September. More about that later.

We have just got permission from GWC to return to our office once a week while Covid numbers are low in Cape Town, so that we can access our books and files. It feels wonderful to be back "at work" once a week after 15 months of working from home

Sadly, however, today there has been an announcement that the Covid third wave has started in another province. Only a third of health workers have been vaccinated and no general population has received a vaccine yet. We pray continually that the Lord will keep this country from a catastrophic third wave such as has been seen elsewhere.

Thank you for your prayers and letters of encouragement. It is such a joy to serve the Lord in the world of theological education in many different capacities, including a lot of networking and connecting. We thank the Lord for how he has provided for us in the past. CMS is now asking us to consider how we will augment our income in the future. Please pray with us that the Lord will guide us clearly in this regard.

With love and prayer for you all.

Caroline and Dick

Video to Watch

Why the Bible still matters​

Check out this discussion from Premiere radio between Andrew Ollerton and Tom Holland (the famous historian not the famous actor) about the Bible and its relevance today.

Finally, let's keep praying for one another that we may grow in confidence in God's gift of eternal life.

Yours in Christ,

Paul Worledge 

Vicar, St. Luke's Ramsgate

www.stlukesramsgate.org​