Key communication points for this week

Here are a few key messages/notices coming out of our service this morning that are worth reinforcing!

Portway buffet
We're putting on a buffet for the staff at Portway School this Thursday at 3pm.

We urgently need people to contribute food and/or their time on Thursday. The last time we did this, it was a huge blessing to the school (see http://prayforportway.blogspot.com/2006/12/portway-school-buffet.html) and it'd be wonderful to do the same again.

Please please consider whether you can help or contribute in any way. Food can be taken up to church on Weds evening for Georgina to collect.

Prayer week
Prayer week started today. If you want some guidance in how to approach this week, including some thoughts about fasting and what this might include, visit www.woodlandschurch.net/page.asp?prayerweek.

John's talk this morning
Many commented on how much they appreciated John's talk this morning. It was a very helpful and inspiring kick-off to Prayer week. If you missed it or would appreciate another listen, just a reminder that you can download the talk as an mp3 from www.podcast.highgrove.org.uk.

New Worship rota and new happenings in 2007

The Highgrove morning services rota (including worship leaders, bands, speakers, words people and sound/techy people) is now available to download.

DOWNLOAD (pdf)
(last revised on 14 January 2007)
Do take a look and note the dates you are down to be involved.

New at Highgrove in 2007

prayer|focus on the workplace
For a while now, we have regularly been having a slot every so often on a Sunday morning to pray corporately for our key front line community activities such as Crusaders, Toddlers and our involvement in Portway School. It is vital that we keep praying for our activities as church and those who are directly involved in working in them.

However, for many of us, our key outworking of life and ministry is not necessarily in a church context but in our places of work, places of study or in our homes. It is just as important that we pray for these activities.

Starting after Easter, we'll be setting aside a slot one Sunday a month to pray for 'the workplace', taking one sector or type of role at a time. This will include Healthcare (we have loads of people in our church who work for the NHS), Accounting and Finance, Charity sector, "Bosses", students, teachers, full time parents/carers and many more. We'll be producing a prayer fact sheet so that people can take away prayer info and pray by name for those in our congregation and the daily issues they face.

Worship Team Evenings
Worship at Highgrove is seen as one of our key distinctives and strengths and we are so grateful for our growing team of singers and musicians who help facilitate this.

We have been feeling challenged to push the boat out further and invest more in this area of church life, both in terms of musical skills and in the quality of our relationships as worship team.

There is so little opportunity on Sunday mornings to ‘build deeper’ in our use of music and our relationships together. We also have very little opportunity at the moment for new musicians and singers to ‘try it out’ in a safe environment.

So, we thought it’d be good to start having Worship Team Evenings once a month. These will alternate between practising/new songs/skills/workshops evenings and vision sharing/meal together/worship and prayer together evenings (suggestions for snappy titles for these evenings gratefully received!). In general, these will be on the first Friday of each month starting at 7.30pm at Highgrove.

The first will be on Friday 2 February where we'll be taking the time to learn and practise some new songs together.

Prayer Week

Including a 12/1 prayer event at Highgrove on Saturday 27 January. Sign up for one hour slots to pray in various prayer rooms in Highgrove. Sign up sheet available soon.

View information about prayerweek including details of events taking place during the week and guidance and hints on how to get the most out of the week by clicking here.

If you would like to book a slot to go down to the 24-7 prayer room at Woodlands during the week, do click on the image below to access the online booking system.