Harvest Sunday Family Eucharist
6th October 2024, 10am
This morning we celebrate Harvest with a family service. The older children will read the lessons and lead the intercessions and the younger children will be in church for longer than normal. There will also be the traditional collection of tinned and dried foodstuffs – tinned meats & vegetables, cans of soup, rice, pasta, lentils, cereal – and toiletries, which again this year will be donated to the food bank at St Matthew’s, Bayswater.
The St Matthew's Food Bank, a local food bank for local people, has proved invaluable for many people. They have been blessed with generosity last year from schools, other churches, charities and local people but hope that this harvest to be able to build up their supplies going into the Autumn and Winter. They are always looking for volunteers on a Wednesday to help.
Morning Anthem
This morning’s anthem is the opening song from the 2003 Disney animated film Brother Bear. Composed by Phil Collins and sung on the film soundtrack by Tina Turner, Great Spirit is a song about the interconnected relationship between humankind and nature which calls for guidance and wisdom from above and reminds us of our responsibility to care for one another and for our world. Today’s arrangement for choir, flute and piano is fresh off the Miller Press.
Owen Dobson
We are pleased that Fr Owen has been appointed as Priest-in-charge of St Pancras Old Church and St Paul’s Camden Square (subject to the completion of the usual formalities). His last Sunday at St John’s will be 13th October. We will wish him well and thank him for his participation in our life and ministry at the 10am service.
St John’s Quiz Evening
17th October, 7pm
This annual event returns on 17th October, when Chris Cochran, landlord of The Victoria, will once again have an array of questions to test your general knowledge. The evening starts at 7pm in church. Tickets cost £20 and are available from the parish office. Included in the ticket price is a supper of homemade cottage pie! Form a team of up to 8 or come on your own – it’s a great fun evening! We’ve had quite a few suggestions of teams forming but so far only 12 tickets have actually been booked! We will take a decision next week on whether to go ahead and it will have to be based on paid bookings – please ensure you have booked your place or your team TODAY!
Lunchtime Proms, Autumn 2024
Sunday 27th October, 11.30am
Dorian Demeny, guitarist
The next prom concert in our autumn series features prize-winning classical guitarist Dorian Demeny. He made his debut concert performance at age six and since then has performed widely across Europe, collaborating with soloists, choirs and other ensembles. He is a graduate of both Stuttgart’s State University of Music and Performing Arts and London’s Royal College of Music. He will perform works by H. Villa-Lobos, F. Sor, A. B. Mangoré and J.S. Bach.
All Souls
4th November 2024, 6pm
We mark this special festival with a service at which we remember those who are part of the church community but who have died. This year the choir are singing the Requiem by J A Trotta and during the service we remember those dear to us who have died. If you will be at the service and wish to have loved ones remembered, please add them on the sign up sheet in the porch. As part of the liturgy, there will be opportunity for you to light a candle and place it on the altar in remembrance of your loved ones.
Autumn Education Courses
Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity
5th November 6.30pm - 9pm, St Paul's Cathedral
Few matters produce more public interest or division than sex and religion. Revolutions in attitudes in the last generations have brought liberation to some, fear and fury to others. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford, will seek to calm fears and encourage understanding by telling a 3,000-year-long tale of Christians encountering sex, gender and family, from the Bible to the present day. Entry is free.
We will be meeting outside the cathedral at 6.15pm so we can enter and sit together.
Bible Book Club
Bible Book Club returned this September and is being held on the first Wednesday of the month at 7.30pm. The next meeting on Wednesday 6th November will be at Alex’s house, 23 Archery Close.
Advent Course
Heaven and Earth Collide
The Advent Course will take place on Wednesdays, 11th and 18th December, at 7.30pm. In these two sessions we will be expanding on the theme of our Advent Carol Service, ‘Heaven and Earth Collide: An Advent Odyssey’. For further information and to book please contact: parishadmin@stjohns-hydepark.com. All events are free to attend.
Purcell Club Tour - Westminster Abbey
6.45pm - 9.15pm on Saturday 16th November
The Purcell Club is named after Henry Purcell, the famous composer, who was organist of Westminster Abbey from 1679-1695. It is a male voice choir formed predominantly from members of the Westminster Abbey Old Choristers’ Association, though guest singers join us from time to time. The singers give their services in order to put on these tours and all the profits from ticket sales go to support the Abbey and a range of small charities.
Visitors assemble at 6.45pm in the Cloisters for a welcome by a member of the Purcell Club or Abbey clergy. They then move into the Abbey and take seats in the Nave for the commencement of the tour at 7.00pm, when the first piece of sacred music is sung. Our guide describes the history and architecture of the Abbey in some detail, moving from one location of interest to the next, including the Quire, Sacrarium, High Altar, the Cosmati Pavement (unique in this country), St Edward the Confessor’s Shrine, Henry VII Chapel and Poets’ Corner. At various points there is a pause for members of the Purcell Club to sing suitable musical items ranging from the 16th to 21st centuries. On returning to the Nave for the final part of the tour, a short piece is played by one of the Abbey organists to demonstrate the Abbey’s magnificent organ. The tour ends with the choir singing a piece of suitable solemnity, such as ‘The Kontakion for the Departed’, around the Unknown Warrior’s Grave as the lights dim. The evening concludes at approximately 9.15pm.
Tickets are £50 each and we are strictly limited to 25 places. We will look to have a meal beforehand (payable separately) ensuring we are in the Cathedral for 6.45pm. Please email the office for further info and to book either of these two events.
Book Club
Book Club met recently and discussed The Night Watch, by Sara Waters. They chose their next book – Hilary Mantel’s A Memoir of My Former Self. They will consider this book at their next meeting on 14th October. As well as a celebrated novelist, Hilary Mantel long contributed to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories form her life and illuminating the world as she found it. “Ink is a generative fluid,” she explains. “If you don’t mean your words to breed consequences, don’t write at all.” A Memoir of My Former Self consists of the finest of this writing over four decades.
