Category: News

Sad news

A long standing member and supporter of the Macedonia, Ruth Breakell, died on 12th July.  She died peacefully in her sleep after a happy family get together.  Ruth, and in fact all her family, worked tirelessly for the church and all its activities over many many years and their influence was immense.  Ruth moved to Shrewsbury to be near her family when her health started to fail.

Many folk in the area remember Ruth, and our thoughts and prayer are with the family at this sad time.

Ignited!

We had a tremendous day on Saturday with our guest speaker Rev Sally Willett from Thomas Risley URC in Warrington.  Sally is also an Evangelism and Renewal Advocate for GEAR (Group for Evangelism and Renewal in the URC).

We were joined by a number of friends from other churches in Failsworth and were blessed by some terrific worship led by Mike Wate (also from Thomas Risley URC) and lively and enthusiastic teaching on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

New Year

Well here we are at the beginning of another New Year in our old building and still no contract signed!  But as we met on Sunday, we focussed on the gifts that the Magi brought to the baby Jesus and we explored what gifts we, as a fellowship, should be offering to our community.

The Lighthouse has been running for about 18 months now and was as a result of a vision held by John and Iris for many years to provide a place where people can drop in for a chat/cuppa.  It was slow to get going – some weeks no-one turned up at all.  But now we have a group of folks who come regularly and a lot of folk who come now and again. In September, they held a Macmillan Coffee Morning/Bring and Buy and they raised a staggering £255 for the Macmillan Nurses. In December, they held a short Carol Service before heading over to the Willow Tavern to share a Christmas Lunch together.  And they are now planning regular (monthly-ish) trips across the road for lunch.

The purpose of the Lighthouse is not to get people to come to church on Sunday mornings (though we wouldn’t turn them away!) but to provide the opportunity to get to know one another, provide friendship – especially for those who live alone, and to ask questions, or even pray for one another.

So the Lighthouse is one of our gifts to our local community – no strings, just friendship and a cuppa.

Heating is fixed

Disaster struck in the week before Christmas and we were left with no heating.  A couple small heaters proved totally inadequate – heating only the roof space – and none of us is 30 foot high so we felt no benefit.  In spite of that, and in spite of a Church meeting decision to not meet for worship on Christmas Day, we changed our minds and planned to meet at 10:30am prepared for a short cold session!

But a second engineer fixed the problem and we were able to meet after Christmas Eve carol singing and also on Christmas morning in a warm church – truly joyful and triumphant

Alleluia!