Episcopal Church Logo
Services and Events
About Us

Quick Links: Regular Services Monthly Services
Dates for your Diary Recent Events Rector's Letter

Daily Prayer

 
 
Regular Services:
Sundays
11.30am
Sung Eucharist
First Wed
each month
10.30am
Communion
Additional services where possible on
Holy Days, Church Feasts etc.
 
 

February Services:
Wed
1st
10.30am
Candlemas
Sun
5th
11.30am
Family Service
Sun
12th
11.30am
Mission Sunday
Sun
19th
11.30am
Quinquagesima
Wed
22nd
7.00pm
Ash Wednesday
Sun
26th
11.30am
Lent 1
Sun 26th 3.30pm Evening Prayer

 

Dates for your diary:

Sunday 12th February at 12.45pm in the Church Hall
TRAIDCRAFT STALL
This stall sells Fairtrade tea, coffee, sweets, biscuits, sugar, pasta, cocoa and dates. All top quality items.

Tuesday 21st February from 11.00am until 2 pm in the Church Hall
Pancake Day - fresh pancakes and other refreshments will be served


Recent Events:

Book Sale

The book sale held on 28th January was, as always, a great success both socially and financially. There was a huge selection of books in every department, many as new, resulting in the very satisfactory total of £235. We were blessed with a fine day so people passing by dropped in as well as the regulars who have come to know what excellent bargains we have and know they will receive a warm welcome with a chance to chat to other booklovers.


Church Hall

In December an urgent request was made to consider how the hall toilet could be made more accessible for users of wheelchairs. After some puzzling and checking regulations, a solution was found and all users of the facilities, whether on wheels or on foot, have reported their satisfaction with the new access.


This is how the Hall now appears ^

 

 

and with what William Wordsworth
called "the necessary" revealed >

< In the process of making the alterations, the joiner made this discovery:

Although we thought that this must represent the completion of the Hall, in fact, thanks to investigation by our resident historian, Gordon Johnson, we now know that the Hall (then called the Church Room) wasn't opened until June 1912, with a Sale of Work to help cover its cost (plus ça change?) opened by Sir John Sinclair, Bart.

As this is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the Centenary, we are planning to mark it with some special event. We are therefore asking members of the congregation to come forward with memories of the hall and events held there, with suggestions of how we could celebrate.

Any ideas will be gratefully received - please email us.


Blooper of the Month

The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.


Recipe Book

Church members have contributed to a book of Recipes : Ancient and Modern now available for £5.

These are on sale in church, from church members or by post
(please e-mail us for details).


 
 

Rector's Letter

Dear People of Wick and Thurso,

What does it mean to be an Episcopalian? Recently I've been working with a parishioner through a wonderful and inspiring collection of leaflets called simply "Anglican" (it hails from the southern hemisphere).

I quote from the note on the back of the folder:

To be Anglican is to be Christian according to a unique tradition - the tradition of the English speaking people. It is to belong to a Church which has existed from the very beginnings of Christianity. It is to share the same heritage with Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Columba of Iona, Aidan of Lindisfarne, Julian of Norwich, John Wycliffe, Queen Elizabeth I, William Wilberforce, Clive Staples Lewis, and seventy million contemporaries living all over the world.

To be Episcopalian is also to be inclusive (even while we have to admit that it was not ever thus). This inclusiveness, shown in our reluctance to draw boundaries and define who is or isn't a true believer, remains one of our most attractive, as well as one of our most exasperating, qualities. Those who like to deal in certainties scold us for being muddle-headed and inconsistent, while, on the other hand, those who have been wounded by the harshness of the teaching in some other Christian groups find our openness a source of hope and healing.

Another aspect of this inclusiveness is the willingness to take the best of the culture around us and put it to Christian use. Cædmon's Hymn, written in the seventh century, uses the imagery and rhythms of pre-Christian poetry to sing in praise of God and his creation. John Donne, again, uses the sonnet form, traditionally used for love-poetry of a very different sort, to express passionately his intense longing for God: "Batter my heart, three-person'd God…"

Retaining not only the best of the culture around us, but also the best of our tradition, is another tendency. In the bewildering period when churchgoers perhaps took bets as they trudged to church on whether the liturgy would be in English or Latin, in England Thomas Cranmer set out to retain the best of the old translated into English, while including the new (some of it even written by him).

But even then there was a reluctance to draw boundary lines: the Book of Common Prayer (albeit not the 1929 Scottish Prayer Book) contains this paragraph in the prefatory article Concerning the Service of the Church: "Though it be appointed, that all things shall be read and sung in the Church in the English Tongue, to the end that the congregation may be thereby edified; yet it is not meant, but that when men say Morning and Evening Prayer privately, they may say the same in any language that they themselves do understand." So the parish clergy, accustomed as they would have been to praying the Divine Office in Latin, could continue to do so at home, and also any of us, praying and reading the Scriptures by ourselves, may do so in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or Gaelic, or any other tongue, with no one able or empowered to forbid us.

There are many other ways in which Episcopalians/Anglicans are subtly "different" in how we express our faith. Nicholas Ferrar, whose feast-day falls in December and whose community came under the patronage of the unfortunate King Charles I, whose feast we observed last month, went to Little Gidding with his family in 1625 to live a life of prayer and of study, as well as of caring for the people around them, of ministering to their needs, physical, intellectual and spiritual. The community was destroyed nine years after his death by the Puritans, who were suspicious of what they saw as Romish practice, and to complete their work, they destroyed all of Nicholas's manuscripts. (Burning of books, as an attempt to destroy the thought contained therein, has a long pedigree, and has never been set aside despite its manifest lack of success.)

This "difference" can never be a source for pride: I confess to cringing inwardly when I hear, for example, anyone extolling the "glories of our liturgy" because that sentiment reeks strongly of being vainglorious to me, especially as I suspect that for many people the "glories" can be pretty abstruse - have we ever wondered, for example, what a visitor would make of us calling ourselves "miserable offenders"? Certainly, we are blessed with beautiful liturgy (sometimes), but this is a gift for us to share, not an investment to hoard and boast of.

No, this "difference" can never be a source of pride, but it is, and should remain, a source of hope and creativity, both for lifelong Episcopalians and for those who come to us seeking space to think, freedom from dogmatism, and a safe place in which to thrive.

With my love and prayers,

Revd Wendy.

 

 

 

 

 
Services and Events
About Us