Bradford North Circuit

A lovely time was had at Calverley Methodist Church on our Dementia Friendly Day on Saturday 10 October. One of the memory displays was a seaside theme (see the photo). Some of the ladies really loved Joey, our adopted donkey, who had come from the Leeds Donkey Sanctuary to add his personality to our seaside theme! A special ‘Thank You’ to the sanctuary and their volunteers for bringing Joey and supporting our day. Thank you to all our volunteers, and I must mention: Emma and Attitude Dance ; Sami from Calverley Cutting Room ; Deborah from Purity and Lyn from Leeds Library Services , for their generous support. Well done to Julie S, for having the vision and making it happen! Kim A, Calverley

Dear Friends, Autumn is the time of mists and mellow fruitfulness. It is a time of harvest and cropping. It is also the precursor to preparing for winter. After the harvest, comes the shedding of leaves and plants returning to their basic condition. This made me think about our lives in Jesus Christ. Have we had a harvest in our lives? Has each of us shown the ripe fruits of Jesus Christ to everyone we meet? Have we been laden with the fruits of the Spirit, to attract people to Jesus, as creatures are drawn to the fruit trees and plants? This is a wonderful time of year to share Jesus with people. (As well as the rest of the year.) Also, at this time of year, nature is preparing for the onset of winter, and plants and trees are shedding leaves and retreating back into bulbs, so they can survive the winter. Are we as Christians doing the same? Have we parts of our personal lives and church lives cluttered up, so that we need to get rid of things? Do we allow Jesus, th...

At Thornton Methodist Church , a Craft Fair was held in July. This was an opportunity for the community to get together and enjoy a wonderful day. There were lots of stalls, including cards, hand-made goods and home grown produce. Refreshments were available throughout the day and lunch was also on offer. Elaine B, Thornton

Firm Foundations UK is a Christian organisation, born out of 2 men’s visions from God.  Lewis Haynes (Chairman) has been involved in ‘Recovery’ and Food Programmes over the last 8 years.  God gave him the vision to take ‘Recovery’ to the people and to help those struggling to fulfil ‘Recovery’ in their current environment.  John Mercer (Treasurer) previously had the God-given task of building a ‘safe haven’ for the vulnerable.  When that task was completed, God told him ‘Don’t sit on your hands – build me a hostel’.   Celebrate Recovery and Prodigal House are the two arms of Firm Foundations UK.  We currently run 3 Celebrate Recovery courses in the community and will be ‘launching’ Prodigal House, our 12 month Residential Discipleship Course on 19th September, taking our first residents in October.  The Celebrate Recovery courses are based on the Beatitudes and encourage us to look at the hurts, habits and hang-ups we carry from our past, together w...

It is always a problem using the church itself for the baby group, the babies being so small and the church being such a huge Victorian barn of a place, and the only time we take the group into church is at Christmas time, when we can sit round the tree. So the Isaiah tent was such a blessing; it created a baby-sized church within a church. We held two baby group sessions in the tent: during the first session, the babies created a banner with a little help from their mums. Their theme for the banner was the baby group song ‘Our God is a great Big God’. In the second session, we had our song and our poem and then finished with tea and cakes. The tent created such a warm friendly safe place - the house of God, within the house of God! We cannot wait for it to come again.                  Rodney D, Calverley

At Haworth Road Methodist Church , we celebrated our 19th annual children’s holiday club, during the last week of July, based on a theme of Frozen Fun. 26 children (aged 5 – 10) took part and enjoyed activities for 2 hours each morning, linking the film of Frozen to various Bible stories.   Two story-tellers related stories from both the film and from the bible and the main link which developed was one of friendship, identifying the friendships which developed in the film, the friendships which the children developed with each other throughout the week’s activities, the friends Jesus had during his ministry and teaching that Jesus is a friend to us all. Lots of fun was had making model fishing nets (complete with fish), making beautiful snowflakes using only sheets of paper and scissors, building (flat topped roof) houses out of paper and also making little Trolls (film characters) out of marshmallows and cocktail sticks. Lots of ingenuity was evident in all of the various desig...

At the end of the summer term, Marian led her final session at Hall Royd Playgroup . Marian, a member at Saltaire Methodist Church , has run the playgroup at Northcliffe Church in Shipley for 37 years and has seen many of her earlier playgroup children return with children of their own. Friends, colleagues, church members and parents turned up at Marian's last playgroup session to show their appreciation for all Marian's hard work and commitment.  We, at Northcliffe, thank Marian for all that she has done for the children in her care and the friendship and support she has offered to all the parents.                         We wish Marian well in her 'retirement' and, at the same time, thank those who are now 'taking up the reins' to secure the future of the playgroup. Jean K

Within the circuit, we have a team of people who take communion to anyone who is housebound, in hospital, or cannot attend church services for a short time. This ministry is really appreciated by our people. Once a month we hold a Circuit Communion in a different church each time. This is so that the team can have a time of communion together and re-supply themselves with consecrated bread and wine. We would also ask that as many people from the church that we are at should come along. It is not exclusively for the team who take out communion. It is a special time of worship for everyone in the church where we are at. Please do not feel that this is not for you - it is!   The dates and locations of these services are on the back of the Circuit Plan. Do come and join us. It is a precious time, and John Wesley wanted the Methodist societies to take communion as often as they could. You may have been away from your own church when it was communion, this could be a wonderful o...

On Tuesday 14 July, Dr John and Mrs Sharon Harbottle, Mission Partners working in the Caribbean island of Haiti, visited the circuit and gave an illustrated presentation about life in Haiti following the earthquake of 2010 and their work amongst vulnerable people. The event was attended by around 50 people, who enjoyed afternoon tea, before the presentation, courtesy of members of Northcliffe Church . Sharon is a teacher and she spoke about her role in education on the island and in recruiting and training local preachers, with which she has made a significant impact. John is a GP, with specialist knowledge of AIDS and he spoke of the major contribution of the Church to medical care, including the relief of malnutrition. It was fascinating to hear of a preparation made from peanuts, which can dramatically turn round the fortunes of malnourished children within less than a week! 2017 will be the 200th anniversary of a Methodist presence in Haiti. It is interesting to note that t...

Everyone who’s ever dined at Wesley’s knows what a "snip" it is, but the snip went a stage further in June when the Gents Quarter Barbershop took over cosy Room 2, while their Baildon Westgate shop was being refurbished. A few from Baildon MC have been regular customers since they opened and a couple of months ago, whilst in one of their three chairs, they said they’d be having to close for three weeks to do up their shop.  We said "why don’t you open a pop-up barbershop in the Methodist Church...? " To cut it short, they came and looked and they liked.  We talked to Lindsay (Lettings) Sykes, who managed a tweak of the room rota.  One of the Cell Groups was a bit disconcerted that they had to move from their usual room, but they now prefer Room 3's intimacy. We pointed out to the folk in Wesley’s that any males they didn’t recognise were likely to be customers of GQ; and we encouraged Wesley’s staff to engage with them.  When the oldies in Wesley’s k...

Many of you will be familiar with Traidcraft .  It is the UK’s leading fair trade organisation, founded in 1979 on Christian principles and dedicated to fighting poverty through trade.  But you may not be aware that Traidcraft has been running at a trading loss for four consecutive years and is now telling the Church and wider community that it urgently needs their help. Traidcraft feels that there are two general misconceptions. The first is that the Fairtrade battle has been won. Chocolate, tea, coffee and many more products with the now familiar Fairtrade Mark are stacked high on our supermarket shelves. However, the job is not done. Injustice in trade and its resulting poverty is as much of a scandal now, as it was 36 years ago and Traidcraft is still doing everything it can to tackle it directly. The second misconception is that Traidcraft and Fairtrade are the same.  They are not. Traidcraft is an independent trading company, with a linked development charity....

Dear friends In this letter I offer some musings about ministerial availability, own arrangement services, and circuit communion services. The ministerial team as currently formed is a year old, with Christine and Andrew having joined Phil and myself last September, and Andrew growing into full-time, long-term ministry, after helping us cover sabbaticals the year before.   We are hopeful that we will be able to work together for some time.   This gives us opportunity to develop the ways in which we work as team, and hopefully enable individual minister’s gifts to be used to the full.  We will continue to work particularly with those in leadership in the churches to which we are ‘link’ ministers, but will also be looking for opportunities to develop new work, building on skills and experience.    There will always need to be a pragmatic balance between responding to existing needs and developing new work, but we do believe that ministry is not simply about ma...

Help with prayer If you have decided to do a prayer leaflet for your church, perhaps following the suggestions of the last few months, you may have told people what prayer is, why it matters, how your church prays, how visitors can make a prayer request, and how they themselves can pray for others – briefly, of course!  But one more topic it may be wise to include is how they can get help on how to pray, if they feel they need it. The Bible is the primary source of help and guidance, in this as in so much else.  You could suggest they read the Psalms, and see how it’s done.  If you have a place of prayer in your church accessible to visitors (give directions), you may also have provided a few booklets, leaflets and other prayer resources there, which people can use if they want.  And perhaps a few written prayers to start them off. But even if you don’t have a place for such resources, you could point to where help and guidance may be found.   If y...