St Leodegar’s Church, Hunston

Today at our churches

St Stephen's Church

Today’s service was again a wonderful, vibrant event! Revd David Nason led the service. Robert carried the staff in the procession. Naomi led our lively worship on the keyboard. Marjorie did the readings and Liz the intercessions.

Revd David shared a bit of background about King Cyrus of Persia, who is considered a pioneer of human rights. He set the Jews free from Babylonian captivity. The first reading told us how King Cyrus was used by God, even though the did not know the God of the Jews. God works in mysterious ways. God may be calling us to do work for him – are we prepared? The New Testament reading was about the Pharisees wanting to entrap Jesus, but He answered in a way that demonstrated that we live in both a secular world (and have to pay our dues in this world) but also spiritual world (where we have to give to God what is God’s). How do we give to God? Not just through giving our money and time, but by caring and loving. We show that we are Christians by what we do more than what we say.

Revd David expressed thanks to all who made the service possible. We do appreciate the time and effort that so many people give.

Sunday School

The children were looking ahead to Remembrance, why that is important and how it is relevant to us. They made poppies from air dry clay and buttons. They looked at the family tree of one of the Sunday School teachers who’s great-grandfather died in World War I. They saw how we all have people in our own family history who were involved in the war, some of whom will have lost their lives. Some of the children (with adults!) went off to see if they could find any war graves in the village graveyard… and they did. The children were very engaged and made some great observations.

St Leodegar's Church

Today’s service was led by Revd Raj Singh. The sermon focused on St Luke and ways in which we can be like him by showing compassion to others, Using your personal talents, learning from spiritual mentors and caring for the marginalised in society. There were 15 adults and 1 child. Joanne Hutchinson and Lois did the intercessions.

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At our churches

St Leodegar's Church

Today’s Holy Communion service at St Leodegars was taken by Canon Stephen Hoy. His sermon focused on the parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22:1–14) which was about God’s open invitation to His kingdom, human rejection of that grace, and the requirement for a genuine, transformed life in response.

Jo Williams and her granddaughter offered the prayers. We had 14 adults and 1 child today.

St Stephen's Church

Revd Roger Pullen lead our beautiful service this morning. Sam did the readings. Revd Roger talked about wedding feast in Matthew 22. Those who were invited to the wedding banquet snubbed the host and even killed his servants, so the king invited those who were disregarded then: the beggars, the poor, those who are ill. God’s invitation to his heavenly banquet is still standing for all of us. Are we accepting his invitation or not?

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At St Stephen’s Church

Today was our Harvest service, celebrated jointly with St Leodegar’s Church. Revd Graham Steele led the service. We had a great morning!

We had a special visitor today, a little robin.

The church was beautifully decorated for Harvest. We are so thankful for all those who offered their time and talents to prepare our church with these displays.

Revd Graham said that Jesus often used stories in an agricultural context as the locals were subsistence farmers and would understand these stories. The Exodus reading talked about the physical bread that God provided, manna. Jesus is the bread of life, spiritual bread. The service this morning provided both types of food: a collection of harvest gifts for the Chichester Foodbank is the physical food and Communion is providing our spiritual food.

The take aways from today’s lesson: Jesus is essential for life. He is the Messiah who provides spiritual food. We need to make a choice to follow him and put our faith in him.

Sunday School

The children had a lot of fun today. There were 20 children today! They were offered a choice of different activities.

  • They made a cardboard barn and fruit and vegetables to go inside. It is called The Green Barn.
  • They created a tree on which they wrote things they are thankful for, as well as things they can do to help others.
  • They played a game where one half of the children hid some harvest items and the other half went searching for it.
  • The built another barn from wooden blocks, with a cardboard roof, that held some real vegetables.
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At our churches

St Leodegar's Church

Today’s service was led by Revd Nigel Mason, with Jo Hutchinson doing the readings and Terry doing the intercessions. There were 16 people present.

The sermon was about the parable of the land owner asking his two sons to go and work in his vine yard. The first son says no but later changes his mind. The second says yes but doesn’t go. We were asked to reflect on which son had done the correct thing.

We were reminded that it is never too late to start to follow God. And that tax collectors and prostitutes who say yes to God and change their ways will enter Heaven before those who say yes to God but do not change their ways. We also reflected that God uses a vineyard as a metaphor for God’s close relationship with us as Christians – symbolising fruitfulness and accountability.

St Stephen's Church

We were very happy to welcome back Revd Graham Steele and his wife Mandy to our church today.

In the Philippians reading, Paul is encouraging the young church to be united. The church was facing persecution, heresy and disagreements. They needed to be united to stand strong against these threats. Paul urges them so seek unity amongst themselves even before they unify in Christ.

We are living in a secular society, and even though we are not being persecuted, we can be on the receiving end of animosity when we speak out from a Christian perspective!

Paul urges the Philippian church to be humble. Humility is often seen as a weakness in today’s life but it requires strength and courage for a Christian to choose humility.

David and Marjorie Coward celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary earlier in the week and Revd Graham said a special blessing for them.

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Today at our churches

St Stephen's Church

We welcomed Revd David Nason back with us today. He summarised the parable of the workers in the vineyard:

  • Life was hard, with workers paid a very small amount of money for their labours.

  • The vineyard owner was charitable. He paid the workers the same amount, no matter what time they started working, The workers who started later were probably going to be without food as they were still waiting for work at the end of the day.

  • Do not be envious or jealous of others.

  • God’s grace over merit! No matter how long we have been “labouring”, God’s mercy is equal to all. It is a free gift and cannot be earned.

Sunday School

The Sunday school looked at the parable of the sower, keeping the upcoming harvest service in mind. The children made examples of the different types of soil the seeds feel on.

St Leodegar's Church

Revd Win Jones took our service today with Naomi playing the organ and doing the readings and Jo Hutchinson saying the intercessions. There were 14 present. The sermon focused on the parable of the land owner who goes and hires workers throughout the day but pays them the same wage. We were reminded how we are all equal in God’s eyes. We looked at the parable in a new light. Thinking about how those picked last may not have been strong or very fit. How they often would not have been picked at all, so would not have had any money to take home. And how thankful they would have been to be able to take a whole day’s pay home to their families to buy food and essentials. This teaches us that we are all equal so long as we know God as our saviour.

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Today at our churches

St Leodegar's Church

Revd Roger Pullen took our Holy Communion service today at St Leodegar’s. The sermon explored the limits of forgiveness, where the apostle Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive someone who sins against him – Peter suggests forgiving someone “seven times,” which seemed very generous at the time, however Jesus replies “seventy times seven” (or seventy-seven times), meaning forgiveness should have no fixed limit.

Today’ service was also advertised as ‘Primary School Bangers’ whereby Naomi asked us for our favourite childhood hymns, which she played and we sung along to! We had some wonderful choices including my (Barry) favourite ‘When A Knight Won his spurs’.

Today we had 16 people attend our service.

St Stephen's Church

Today’s service was a “banger” indeed! It was great to have Revd Stephen Everard and his wife Jane back with us. He also looked at forgiveness. In the Genesis reading Joseph was very forgiving towards his brothers, for a debt that they could never pay. The first servant in the Matthew reading was also forgiven a debt he couldn’t pay, but then didn’t offer the same grace and mercy to others. Jesus paid our debt – that we could never pay, and we are expected to also offer the same grace to those who have hurt us or done us wrong. We are reminded of this every time we say the Lord’s prayer.

Primary School Bangers

We sang 6 hymns that were nominated by people in the congregation. They told us why they picked each song, which was really nice. It lead to a lot of discussion after the service about how these songs had meaning in many of our lives! Naomi was really great with the accompaniment on the keyboard

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Today at our churches

St Stephen's Church

It was lovely to have Revd David Nason with us. He talked about the message in today’s reading in Romans “Love is the fulfilment of the law”. Romans, written by Paul, is a handbook of the Christian way of living. Christians are to live and spread the Gospel in the Power of Love and not the love of power.

Sunday School

The Sunday School continued looking at Creation, looking at animals today. They answered some questions about animals in their lives and created animals through drawings, cutting out, colouring, etc.

They also looked the difficulties a village in Africa has with elephants and the ingenious solution of creating a bee fence! They created a model bee fence.

Emmanuel International UK (one of the missions that our benefice supports) is installing a bee fence in the village of Mafuluto. You can read more about this in the Bushnet.

St Leodegar's Church

Altar window

It was a lovely service taken by Revd Graham Steele with well known hymns on the screen.

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Sunday at our churches

Joint service at St Stephen’s Church

What a wonderful and exciting day we had at church on Sunday!

The first reading was dramatized for 3 voices: God, Moses and Narrator.

Moses stepped aside to see the burning bush, then listened to God. God asked “What is in your hand?” and gave Moses a sign to trust in God. Then Moses obeyed.

Revd Anne used “show and tell” to share about the importance of the different elements of a service, and about how God has spoken to her in her life.

Remember these words: “God speaks and I…” You fill in the verb. How do you respond when God speaks to you? What do you have in your hand that God is asking you to use?

Clare did the intercessions, using visual aids to demonstrate the points she was praying about.

It was Revd Anne’s last official duty with our benefice. She has made a great impact on us and we thanked her for all she has done for us!

The Community Rangers from the RSPB Pagham Harbour Reserve’s display table was very interesting and well attended!

A number of us stayed for the bring your own picnic. Though the weather was much better then predicted, we ended up spending a lovely sociable time around the table in St Stephen’s Room instead of outside. We shared the lovely cake that the children had decorated with their names as a thank you to Revd Anne.

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