Kingfisher family newsletter June 2020

JUNE 2020

ISSUE 26

KI N G F I S HER International Day of Prayer 2020 asking God to intervene around the world Who could have imagined before the start of this year that a pandemic would sweep around the world, closing down nations, claiming the lives of 328,000 to date, wrecking economies, tearing families apart and causing untold misery? The effects of COVID-19 will be with us for years to come, but right now, with families separated, churches closed and many countries just not geared up to providing State aid for their most vulnerable, there is an unprecedented level of hardship around the world.

However, there is some good news: • A recent TearFund survey suggests that one in twenty people have started to pray during the lockdown despite not praying before. (Poll: Savanta ComRes, from 2101 adults polled between 24 - 27 April) • According to Sky News, large numbers of people are connecting with their faith online during the coronavirus lockdown.

• Christianity Today reports: ‘Millions of worried people who have turned to Google with their anxiety over COVID-19 have ended up connecting with Christian evangelists in their search results—leading to a spike in online conversions in March’ (christianitytoday.com) And there have been many, many examples of churches in the UK and elsewhere getting involved with food distribution programs and befriending services, ensuring the elderly, isolated and vulnerable are not abandoned.

believers around the Kingfisher Family join together to pray for each other.

• Simon Haq, India, will be leading us in prayer for Malawi and Mozambique

The Bible reminds us that “The • Noel Delfin, The Philippines, will be prayer of a righteous person is leading us in prayer for the UK powerful and effective” (James 5;16).

And Psalm 133 reminds us that when • Iain Anderson, Spain, will be leading us in prayer for the Philippines believers join together in unity, “…the Lord pronounces His blessing” (Psalm • Leslie Thomas, Northern Ireland, 133:3) will be leading us in prayer for Zimbabwe On Sunday, June 28th, we get to participate in that blessing as we gather together with brothers and sisters around the world to pray for one another in the International Day of Prayer 2020. The prayers of thousands of righteous people all praying for the Lord to mercifully bring healing and release from this Pandemic, that His Kingdom would be released in a fresh way in nations where there has been such suffering in recent months. As we join together in prayer on June 28th, we are going to be led by the National Directors around the world, as they each pray for one other country:

“The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” (James 5;16)

• Charles Mithowa, Malawi, will be leading us in prayer for India But this month sees perhaps the most powerful expression of solidarity as

• Joseph Maravanyka, Zimbabwe, will be leading us in prayer for Northern Ireland • Tim Slegg, Spain, will be leading us in prayer for China • Edwin Alfaro, Macao, will be leading us in prayer for Spain All the churches that are able to around the family will be encouraged to pray for the other countries and together we are going to believe for a mighty movement of the Holy Spirit in this world.

As part of the Day of Prayer, we are having a special Gift Day, with all money raised going to support our brothers and sisters in the countries around our Family that have been really badly hit by the pandemic.You can now give online by credit or debit card via our website: kingfisher.org.uk.

Every penny we raise will go towards front-line help for those who need it the most in our International Family.

There has never been a better time to join together in prayer. Despite the challenges we all face in doing that, I believe that God is going to cause this to be a powerful, strategic and joyful time, as His Holy Spirit is poured out around the world.

News from Kingfisher Church Connecting with each other during lockdown Our building may be closed but our church is very much open as we continue to offer opportunities to connect and to offer support so that we can still grow in relationship with God and each other! Here is how Kingfisher Tredworth has been operating over the period of lockdown. If you would like to know more about anything on this list then do contact us via the church email address, info@kingfisher.org.uk and someone will get in touch. Please join us as much as you can and encourage other people to come and see. We need each other, let’s put these opportunities to good use Connect • Online church services every Sunday • After church Zoom get together Sunday straight after 10am service • Connect groups on WhatsApp and bi-weekly Zoom meetings

• Monthly prayer meeting on Zoom, 2nd Saturday 10am • Prayer newsletter every week by email • Respond Group on Zoom to explore questions of faith, every Tuesday 7.30pm • One-Eighty daily care package and Instagram group for Youth, as well as catch ups on Zoom on Friday nights and for the girls group, Cherished on Thursdays.

• Kingfisher newsletter on Facebook • Kids Sunday get together on Zoom and home resources if requested.

Support • Daily Bible text/encouragement Monday to Friday • Pastoral care from Connect group leaders • Weekly video update from Pastors James and Ollie • Celebrate Recovery support/ encouragement on WhatsApp

• Connect group Leaders WhatsApp group • Monthly leadership newsletter • Library delivery service (On website) • Fear Not resource • Relentless Trust Bible Study.

• Virtual bands to lead us in worship on a Sunday as well as, ‘Not Finished Yet’ - songs of hope from our Engage team on YouTube and also available on other music platforms • Praise and worship playlist on Spotify (Mapping the route) • Food/supplies home delivery for church family if needed • Feeding the 5000 food Programme, delivering to people in Barton and Tredworth If you need any help or support or just someone to talk to, please contact as and we will respond as quickly as we can.

Pastor Ollie

Gill and Neal Parkinson's Connect Group We’re a group of 12 and we meet for a bible study and prayer every other week on zoom, which is a bit of a feat, but we're getting better at it gradually. In the weeks in between, we meet once on zoom to check-in we can say how we're feeling, what's going on in our lives, and encourage each other. Of course we have WhatsApp to keep in touch as required.

Also, every week day morning, at 9am, those who want to meet together on zoom to do PE with Joe Wicks (see photo), which started as a way to encourage each other, and bring a fixed point to each day - but, do you know what, I think we are actually getting fitter! We’re really looking forward to us being able to meet up again in person though. * Cherished- teenage girls groups

Children’s ministry

Although we’re really looking forward to being able to meet up again in person, Cherished zoom call most weeks during lockdown to chat and keep connected. It’s been really lovely to stay connected in this way to highlight our struggles and positives about this time.

Sunday Fusion and Little Fishes kids and leaders enjoyed a Sunday catch up and a game of Bingo last weekend! We started by singing Happy birthday to Annabel as it was her birthday and then the serious game of numbers began! Lots of fun was had - congratulations to Martha, Isobel and Olivia who were our full house winners!

News from Kingfisher Church The timing of the 'Not Finished Yet' project has been very fitting, and The Engage team certainly not as a result of our clever timetabling. I've wrestled a The Engage team has, like lot with the significance of these everybody and every group, songs, but I hope that they have experienced changes during this been of some encouragement, and time. The 'Relentless Trust' study will Type to enter textcontinue to allow God to speak guide Ollie created has talked a lot as you re-listen and as you share about OPPORTUNITY and I think them.

There's more on the way! that's been a key word in my mind This has opened the way for more for our worship ministry. Worship creative outlets: Emily Jones, Julia always has the power to unite us in Hartsoe, Aimee Flemons and the spirit; it's that communal act of legendary Oscar Tucker are all stepping past ourselves to put the lending their artistic flair to glory of God front and centre. bringing the songs alive visually. For Now that we are temporarily now, this is confined to our separated, that call to worship YouTube videos (or as far as they together is perhaps more glaring are shared!), but we're exploring than it was before. The Spirit isn't other avenues - we're blessed with socially distancing. His presence is creative people, and worship comes not cancelled. His power is not in many forms! subject to our circumstances. The Continued from page 2

government rests on HIS shoulders.

(I'm typing this as a reminder to myself!)

For the most part, we have just been carrying on; trying to serve faithfully and step into the opportunity to worship and facilitate that opportunity in our online services. Thanks in no small part to Mr David Burn (*applause) we've been able to explore going beyond just me on repeat with an acoustic guitar, and create that sense of band; of team; of corporate worship. It's been great having everyone (to my memory) in the team involved at some point, including some great crossovers with Mike (the Bhun) Bonner as he heads up the worship for the Westgate services. Thank you everyone!

The resolve to come together and make a joyful sound has encouraged me. One thing I hope for is that our resolve to worship, and our resolve to capitalise on opportunities to do it together is strengthened during this time. We certainly have an opportunity to exercise that privilege to boldly come before the throne of God PERSONALLY, which is also being brought sharply into focus in lockdown. It's always been my responsibility to steward my own worship life first, and God has been reminding me of that.

I know Ethan Hartsoe has been lending his formidable electric guitar skills to Isy Neave from St Andrew's in Churchdown, who has taken the lockdown as a chance to record and release some of his own songs - check them out online!

That's another great example of connections and creativity being born in a season bearing a lot of negative weight - 'beauty for ashes' comes to mind.

In addition, Burn 24/7 is an international worship movement that is just beginning to find a new home in Gloucester - this kicked off with an amazing online worship night on Sunday 31st May, 6pm 9pm. The belief is that this will be a catalyst for a move of God in our city.

I hope it gives a glimpse of some of the opportunities God has shed light on for our team to connect with one another, with the rest of our church family, and beyond that.

Worship is connection. Join me in

praying that we would believe for and step into a connection with Almighty God any time we seek him with a heart of worship: Every song, prayer, Bible verse, drawing, poem, cross-stitch, meal, encouraging word, meditation, moment shared... let's recognise our ordinary moments as the stomping ground for the work of God. Amen!

Joe Alison, Rachael and Paula’s connect group We were slow to get started and still haven’t managed to have everyone join us in our online meetings due to some not having internet access. We do message or phone each other, and some have been able to meet briefly one to one, which we hope to do more of now guidelines are more relaxed.

We use Messenger video chat for Connect, which works for most of the group. We are currently studying the Relentless Trust series.

We also run a more informal group on alternate weeks (see photo), where we just chat and catch up.

This came about because many of us are feeling the effects of isolating or shielding alone, and two weeks is a long time to wait to ‘see’ each other, and not good for our mental health. I think we have gained a new appreciation for just how meaningful and important it is that we regularly meet to support each other and grow together in Christ as much as we can. As strange as virtual meetings can be, I believe they have strengthened us as a group.

News from Kingfisher Church On the road to Emmaus Thoughts from my journey with Jesus - by Sandra Ashenford Sandra Ashenford is a member of the Kingfisher Church family at Tredworth.

She was introduced to Jesus at primary school but has spent most of her adult life in the company of sceptics and non-believers. This is a series of light-hearted blogs in which she reflects on the challenges of growing in faith and sharing the Good News amidst the pressures of a modern life.

As I have mentioned in earlier writing, I attended a Church of England primary school which provided me with my first connection to Jesus.

The whole school attended church for a special assembly every Wednesday morning and it was here that I learned some wonderful hymns, the lyrics of which I can still recite to this day. (Sadly, I can’t actually sing).

One of these songs was Dear Lord and Father of Mankind by John Greenleaf Whittier, and it has been in my mind a great deal over the past few very strange months.

The song has a really rousing tune, but the lyrics are full of references

to the calm and peace that Jesus can bring to the chaos and anxiety of our everyday lives.

The final verse reads: Breathe through the heats of our desire your coolness and your balm; let sense be dumb, let flesh retire speak through the earthquake, wind and fire, O still small voice of calm, O still small voice of calm!

How much have we needed that voice of calm during this most unprecedented of situations?

Whoever could have imagined as 2020 rolled from winter into spring that the whole world would grind to a halt and we would be confined to our homes as a horrific virus wreaked havoc?

I was due to visit Jerusalem later this year, a plan, like so many others, that has been scuppered by Covid-19. In preparation for the visit I had been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s outstanding history of the city entitled Jerusalem: the biography.

The book has some 700 pages and each one is peopled by murderous tyrants and power-crazed despots; holy leaders who murder their children and warriors who build grandiose temples to God with the sweat of the vanquished.

While Judaism, Christianity and Islam each scream their claims on the city throughout the narrative, just a few pages of the book focus on the life and teachings of Jesus himself.

Here, too, I was struck by how much Jesus is that ‘still small voice of calm’ in that history of hatred, intolerance and bloodshed.

No wonder the Jews were perplexed by Jesus; here was a man preaching love and kindness when they were expecting a swordwielding fighter like the ones they were used to.

During this pandemic, it has been ordinary folk performing acts of kindness with quiet dignity who have captured the nation’s heart. Captain Tom Moore hoped to raise a few hundred pounds by doing laps of his garden but became a symbol of the nation’s humanity, of people’s desire to help each other.

It is my profound hope that as life slowly reverts to something approaching normality, what will remain from all the chaos will be that realisation that we really are all in this life together and that we should treat each other with kindness, respect and tolerance.

News from Kingfisher Church Our church library is branching out!

In September 2019 Pastor Ollie Bennett of Kingfisher Church Tredworth gave a series of talks entitled ‘Into The Stretch Zone’.

Through this series he encouraged people to grow resilience in their faith by moving out of the comfort zone and into activity for God even where we didn’t feel equipped to do so.

Out of this series came a number of initiatives.

One was an idea to create a church library as a Christian book resource to help church members in their Christian journeys.

Pastor Ollie announced the idea at church services and asked if people could donate books to help stock the library. At the same time we made an application for a grant to Speaking Volumes, a Christian charity which funds the provision of Christian books for libraries in schools, prisons, hospitals, churches and anywhere where books can be loaned and read by many people. In November 2019 we were delighted to receive a grant from Speaking Volumes and used this to buy a selection of books from our local Christian bookshop, Books Plus Gloucester.

While waiting for the grant decision, we received many generous donations of books from our church members as well as DVDs and CDs. So with these and the Speaking Volumes books we had a good selection of titles. We also received a financial donation and this was used to buy good second hand books.

These were purchased from Scrolleaters Christian Bookshop in Stroud as, in addition to stocking new books, they have an excellent range of second hand books.

All the books were registered and are now on our Kingfisher Church website, a simple loan process was set up, and we were left with one

question: where to put the books?

Heather Gatt suggested a mobile set of bookshelves, as often used in schools, and Mark Jones designed, supplied the materials and, with some help, put the bookshelves together.

The library was opened on 5th January 2020 and since then it has been well used by church members and even more book donations have been received. As a result the library currently contains 547 items including 500 books, 25 DVDs and 22 CDs. Due to the growth of donations we planned to build a second set of mobile bookshelves, as the first one was full and we had more book donations needing storage space. Unfortunately before we could do so lockdown for COVID-19 occurred.

But with setbacks come opportunities and we have just started a home delivery service to church members. While this has only just commenced, it occurred to us that our library could be helpful to other local Christians. So we are now offering to loan and deliver our books, DVDs and CDs to any Christians in Gloucester, Cheltenham and the surrounding local areas.

If you would like to borrow one of our books go to the RESOURCES dropdown on the Kingfisher Church Homepage and select CHURCH LIBRARY. This takes you to a page where you can see all the items in the library. The default view is in book number order but you can change this order by clicking on the title, author or category columns and this will change the order to an alphabetic list of the chosen type.

There is also a search field where you can find an item by whatever you know about it.

Once you have decided which book, DVD or CD you want, you can order it by calling 07775 439093 or by emailing using the contact area under the list of books. When requesting a book remember to provide your address and contact details (email or phone number) so the book can be delivered to you.

To return a book just call, or text, the same number and arrangements for collection will be made. We suggest borrowers try to limit the loan period to two weeks so other people have the earliest opportunity to borrow the book, but if a longer loan period is needed that isn't a problem.

News from the Kingfisher Family Coronavirus relief eorts around the Family.

Coronavirus relief efforts around the Family

From the UK to the Philippines, believers are getting involved in practical initiatives to bring help and hope to vulnerable and isolated people. Here are some examples:

FromPastor the UK to the Philippines, From Pastor Joseph Maravanyika in From Joseph Maravanyika in believers Zimbabwe:are getting Greetings from Zimbabwe, we really in times like involved in practical initiatives to appreciate bring helpyour andcontinued hope to encouragement Zimbabwe: these Zimbabwe many other nations hasare recorded corona virus cases it has claimed vulnerable andlike isolated people.

Here some three examples: Our appreciation one. Due to covid 19 pandemic, the government has closed schools and other institutions and to Kingfisher family church for are authorizing a gathering of not more than 50 people. As a church we are having home groups continued encouragement during this world global crisis, and Sunday service we will have two services to accomodate and minister and ofencourage which oureach nation is not being spared. We really thank From Pastor Sam Atwal in India: other. Unfortunately we cannot do live streaming due to our limited resources and with most of God for you, it is so great and encouraging to always our church members not being technology compatible so we are trying to source hand sanitizers Food being gathered to be distributed to families hard hit and hand washing soaps as a preventive measure for us and the church members at large.

of hope in time of global pandemic and hear words by the pandemic

distress.

Our nation is in total lockdown during this global crisis From Pastor Sam Atwal in India: with churches closed. Glory to God that we are reaching out our members through whats app groups.

Food being gathered to be distributed to families As you are in the front lines hard hit by the pandemic assisting those in dire needy and distressed. We are compelled do the same in our communities. We are providing handwashing soaps, homemade saniters and washable face masks. Above all Message of hope to the hurting communities during the crucial time.

Continue to lift our nation dealing n your prayers.

From Aileen Pajarillaga, school teacher in Thank you so much the Aileen Philippines: From Pajarillaga, school teacher in the Philippines, delivering food parcels to Dumagat families Pastor Joseph Maravanyika Delivering food parcels to Dumagat families

News from Kingfisher Treasure Seekers Practical help for those struggling in Gloucester Treasure Seekers works with around 2000 vulnerable people a week. We have adapted our services to be able to offer support through phone and web-chat during this time of lockdown. We have also been providing some limited support to local individuals and families who have practical needs. So far we have: •

Made and delivered food parcels

•

Supplied kettles, toasters and microwaves for individuals without those basics

•

Made and delivered craft kits for those struggling with their mental health in isolation

•

Helped set up a temporary 'food bank' for those living in the Westgate area in town

We have had support from Gloucester City Homes (GCH), Councillor for the ward of Westgate Dawn Melvin and Kingfisher Church to meet needs so far, however demand is increasing and we would love your support to help vulnerable people in Gloucester through this

lockdown period, both physically and emotionally.

Every penny raised from this appeal will be spent on supplies going directly to people. Any funds remaining after lockdown is over will be put aside into a 'hardship' fund allowing us to meet basic needs of people we come into contact over the coming months/years. If you would like to donate please go to our website www.kftseekers.org.uk and click on the ‘Get Involved’ tab, then ‘Fundraising' and ‘Covid-19 Necessities Appeal’.

GCH have given us the use of the Lifelink offices on Archdeacon Street and we have access to the county council food distribution and vouchers systems to top up our weekly hampers with goods not supplied by FareShare and the wonderful food donations by Morrisons, without whom we would not be able to deliver to all the people we do.

Currently we only deal with the most vulnerable families and we deliver to around 25 households a week. With the fantastic help of drivers from GCH and a number of amazing volunteers we get the deliveries out every Friday morning.

If you know anyone in the Westgate area that might need help at this time, or you would like to donate some food please email foodbank@kftseekers.org.uk

GET INVOLVED WITH THE NEWSLETTER! In order for this newsletter to grow and develop, we need your help! If you go to any Kingfisher event and have taken a great photo, then please post it on our Facebook page or email it to Kirsty at kirstydalley@kingfisher.org.uk. The copy deadline for the next issue (due out in September 2020) is 20th August.

If you would like to get involved in the production of the next newsletter then email us with your particular area of interest.

Hope you enjoy hearing all that is happening across the Kingfisher Family!

Kingfisher Church Moor Street Tredworth Gloucester GL1 4NJ www.kingfisher.org.uk info@kingfisher.org.uk +441452 304339 Š Kingfisher Church, 2013