Dear friends
We are looking forward to coming together for Advent 4, our nativity service on Sunday at 11am. We look forward to some elements from the Stepping Stones nativity on the 8th December led by members of Rock Solid, MBC youth group as well as some additional characters. If you have mentioned that you want to be in it you are in! We need you! If you are in the nativity, please arrive between 10.15 and 10.30 so that we have time to put on costumes. If you want to be in it , including non-speaking parts, just turn up at that time and we’ll put you in!
We’ll have a band to lead our carols that day.
Rock Solid take a break that night.
On Monday we have festive Beacon Café 10-12midday, do come along and share a Christmas snack. All ages welcome. We welcome friends from the Leeds Jewish Housing Association too who are bringing Channukah snacks. We’ll be giving out the completed festive hampers during the café too. Thanks to those who brought things and those who helped put them together last Monday afternoon. We’ll also have a ‘Christingle table’ where people have offered to help make Christingles. If you want to come do join in to help.
On Christmas Eve we meet for our all-age candlelight Christingle service at 4.30-5.15. Then on Christmas Day we meet at the slightly earlier time of 10.30am for about 45 mins/hour for a special all age Christmas Day service where we look back at Advent and forward in thanks at the birth of Jesus.
We meet again on Sunday 29th December at 11am where we continue the theme of Down to earth at our all-age service.
Then its All-age café church on Sunday 5th January. There will be no beacon or lunch club on the week beginning the 30th December so do look out for each other.
I have attached greetings from our friends in Romania and a thanks for your prayers and support. This also appears in a seperate post on our website.
I also pass on greetings from Michael and Elizabeth Caddick. Michael was a minister at MBC and now lives in Cornwall. Michael says.
“We assure you of our love at this Christmas time and wish you every blessing in 2025”
There is an area of wall in church now near to the entrance where you can put up a Christmas card to the rest of the church family. You can include a simple greeting or a prayer for Christmas or something you think would encourage people for now or the new year. It will stay up until the 6th January.
Look out for the extra lights and greetings on the church building…thankyou
“You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colours in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”
Matthew 5:14
Shelley
