Bradford North Circuit

What kind of monkey can fly? A hot air baboon! What is a cat’s favourite colour? Purr-ple! Yes, we’ve been in school again! For the fifth year in succession, we took the story of Noah to each of the Year 4 classes continuing the tradition begun when Calverley Methodist Church shared money they had been given with the rest of the Circuit and Sharon Fell devised a day’s work based on the story. What we do has developed and Sharon would no longer recognise most of how we spend the day. We begin by telling the story using the excellent props made for Shipley’s Open the Book assemblies. Then the story and its message are reinforced as the children do Maths, doubling and halving as they convert cubits into metres and realise just how large the Ark was! They do not realise how much work they are...

Calverley Church was a hive of activity on the weekend of 25/27 September. It all began on Friday morning, when a group of local schoolchildren arrived to bake bread. Another group came in the afternoon – total of 57 children! As the pictures show, they really got ‘stuck in’! On Friday evening, Christian comedian, Andy Kind, had people rolling in the aisles, with his unique brand of humour. (For those who missed Andy, he is due to make another appearance in the circuit, at Baildon Church on Saturday 14 November. For tickets, see the Baildon web site). On the Saturday, local community groups were encouraged to come and display what they have to offer to the people of Calverley. A broad range of activities on offer were viewed by an excellent turn-out of people, as the photos show:- The weekend continued on Sunday with the Harvest Festival service at 10.30 am and a special Harvest Songs of Praise in the evening, featuring The Wesley Singers. The s...

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

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

On Palm Sunday, Calverley are celebrating by having a procession around Calverley Park led by a donkey! So we thought it would be a good idea to take the young people of the Junior Church along with their mums and dads to the donkey sanctuary to get to know the donkeys and perhaps meet the one that would be visiting us on Palm Sunday. So, on Sunday 1st March, we gathered in the Schoolroom. Kim led us in a short prayer and then off we went to the sanctuary. And what a brilliant time we had! We were told that two of donkeys had personal appearances on Palm Sunday and the lucky two had not been chosen. Temperament and size have to be taken into consideration and the decision is taken nearer the time, but we were told that one donkey will be visiting York Minster and another Calverley Methodist Church. Can you imagine those two donkeys discussing their day out, when they get back to the sanctuary? Whatever their stories, they will both have played an important part in our telling ...

One of the problems we often find in Junior Church is that we have a small number of children, but with a wide age range. So for this reason, we thought we would try Scripture Union’s Mosaic, which is designed to cater for small groups like ours. In our first 5 sessions, we have been looking at Creation. One of the high spots of Session one was when we piled junk and collage materials on the table and reminded the children that God started with nothing and created something beautiful. We then asked them to create something beautiful out of the junk on the table. In Session two, we looked at God making the land, sea and plants and for this session we prepared pots of bulbs. At the time of writing this, they are now flowering in our church windows to brighten these dreary winter days. Session three was ‘God makes the sun, moon and stars’. For this session, we made rockets out of cardboard and imagined we were sitting in them, looking out of the windows at all the stars, and we reme...

Carols in the Park is always popular with the Calverley community and always well attended. This year it was led by Ruth Hall, assisted by Phil, the new vicar at St Wilfrid’s. The singing was followed by refreshments in the Church Hall - hot pork sandwiches, hot drinks and mince pies, with craft activities for the children. A positive community event, giving the people of Calverley a chance to get to know us. Rodney D, Calverley

What an inspirational day we had when 3 classes from Park Side Primary School joined us to make Christingles. With the numbers involved, we decided to have three separate services: 2 groups of 30 children in the morning and a group of 60 children in the afternoon. Firstly, we had a workshop in the church hall, where Kim explained the meaning of the Christingle and what the various components stood for. Then the children set about making their own Christingles. When they were completed, we went into church for a short service, which concluded with the lighting of their Christingles and the singing of Silent Night. What a treat we had when the children sang Silent Night for us in german (!) which they had been rehearsing for their Nativity production at the school. Rodney D, Calverley  

On 6 th September, a group of friends walked or cycled a distance of 27 miles from Skipton to Calverley! This was to raise funds for Calverley Methodist “Raise the Roof” fund. A total of £1500 was raised. It was an all-age group ranging from children aged 5 to adults 80 plus years young.  Sadly it rained all day long and most people were really soaked through, when they ended their journey at Calverley Methodist Church.  Some of the children had cycled the whole of the journey.  However, arriving back at church, one would have thought they had just cycled around the park - they seemed to still have lots of energy! Yes, they were wet through and were looking forward to their bacon butties and hotdogs, but they seemed very happy. I didn’t hear any of them complaining!   The more mature friends on arriving back, well…. there were conversations of aching legs, backs and shoulders and very blistered feet –...

When we started fund-raising, the Lighthouse team got their heads together to think of ideas of what we could do. We have made bacon butties for the brass band concerts in the park; we had a fantastic sponsored walk from Skipton to the church on what turned out to be one of the wettest Saturdays of the year but raised £1500! Then we thought of a pop concert: Were Calverley Methodists ready for a pop concert? After much thought we booked the band, Time Warp , who play music of the 50s, 60s and 70s. After I met up with David, their leader, and told him of my concerns – “Did they expect their audiences to dance?” - he said they sometimes play at concerts and they dance, and sometimes they play at dances and no one dances. My worry was - would the Methodists of Calverley dance? Could the Methodists of Calverley dance? Why did I worry? The hall was packed with the young and the more mature, and people from the community, who don't normally come to events at the church. And...

What a surprise when we got the invitation to attend the awards presentation at the Banqueting Suite of the Leeds Civic Hall for the ‘Leeds in Bloom’ competition. The hall was packed with people from the various organisations in Leeds - churches, offices, hotels, retail parks, small shops, large shop, pubs, St Gemma’s Hospice  and several schools with garden projects. We shared a table with our friends at St Wilfrid’s parish church, who were  also up for an award. We both got Gold Medals for our efforts!   It was good to witness for the church at such an event, when we were amongst people from industry and commerce, and we were representing Bradford North Circuit, even though we are in Leeds! The morning ended with an excellent lunch too. Rodney Calverley Methodist Church

The sun shone for us, as we enjoyed our picnic in the park. It was a great worship and praise celebration time on Pentecost Sunday afternoon and we were very pleased to be joined by friends from our neighbouring St Wilfred's Church. We sang songs of praise accompanied by Calverley Methodist Church's monthly Thursday worship team "Let's Praise Band". Beforehand we had asked our Calverley Junior Church if they would like to pick a hymn or a song for us all to sing together in the park. They chose " The Happy Song " by Pharrell Williams. Our Let's Praise Band didn't feel too confident to actually play the "Happy Song", so we decided to play it from the CD. This song has recently been in the charts. I don't know why, but not many of us Methodists had ever heard it before!!! If you don't know the "Happy Song", it's quite a fast tune with a very catchy chorus, singing over and over the words "I'm happy...

The children of the Charlie Wesley Craft and Cooking Club, and a couple of Dads too, turned their hand to pottery, when we created the animals that went into the Ark. The figures were air-dried then fired to bisque, and then they were painted and glazed and re-fired. How do you like the results? Charlie Wesley Craft and Cooking Club at Calverley Methodist Church has developed into a group of 3 to 8 year olds (and mums and dads too) who meet on the first Saturday of the month and cook and craft stories from the Bible. Rodney 

At Calverley, in our publicity material, we always describe ourselves as the "Church in the Garden". Now we can say the prize-winning garden, because we gained a silver award in the Spring judging in The Leeds in Bloom competition. We try to use the garden throughout the year in the Lighthouse Sunday Services and this year we had a mass bulb-planting. You can find pictures on our Facebook page . We held a regeneration service and planted two trees for the future, a plum tree and a family apple tree which has 3 varieties on one tree! At the moment we have 2 plums developing nicely and 14 apples.  We also have the ‘Stand Tall for Jesus’ project. We gave each member of the congregation a sunflower in a pot of soil, and when they had grown to four leaves, we asked them to bring them back to plant in the garden, so they could grow tall for Jesus over the summer months. Rodney

Calverley Pentecost Praise and Picnic in the Park After morning service…. in the park that’s next to Calverley Methodist Church. We will be having a praise and picnic worship time with live music – fun – games – and… A Pentecost Celebration CAKE! Please remember bring your picnic…. Pentecost Sunday 8th June at 12.30pm put the date in your diary now everyone is welcome

On the 20 th of October, it was Lighthouse Sunday at Calverley Methodist Church and all of the children and some of the adults went on a walk around Calverley, trying to find objects starting with all the letters of the alphabet from A-Z, (it’s not as easy as it sounds!). We walked around Calverley going through the fields and the woods and luckily, the weather stayed ok. Here are some of the things we found: ·          Flower ·          Leaves ·          Officer ·          Yard ·          Zig zag It was a very enjoyable and interesting experience for everybody and I think we would all do it again if we could! By Caitlin

Wrose Methodist Church Friday 25 October 2013 7.00 pm A Concert in aid of the Redevelopment Fund given by the Calverley Methodist Church Palm Court Quintet and Singers Tickets/Programme £5

Following on from the success of the Schools Noah's Ark Day project, Calverley have once again received a donation to enhance Christian Children's work in the area. So, in October, John Hardwick , author, songwriter and creative Christian communicator is coming to Calverley. He will lead a fun and lively weekend. There will be a training workshop for those involved in Children's ministry and anyone who leads worship where youngers are present on the evening of Friday 14 October, and on Saturday 15 October a morning activity session for 5-11s and an All Age Cool and Crazy Praise Party on the Sunday morning. The training workshop and service are opento everyone; however, please book for the workshop. For the events on Saturday, priority will be given to Calverley children, but if you contact our children's workshop northkids@bradfordnorth.org.uk before 26 September, places can be booked for youngsters across the circuit. Calverley are really excited by this o...

Calverley Methodist Church celebrate their Church Anniversary on 19/20 March 2011. On the Saturday there will be a coffee morning and then an afternoon tea and concert given by the James Farrell Concert Band. On the Sunday morning worship at 10.30 pm will be led by Rev Peter Whitaker. The 6.00 pm service will be led by Rev Richard Atkinson. A warm welcome is extended to everyone to share in the Celebrations.