Creation: Living Water
Like the natural world, where we have the seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, our church year is made up of seasons. We begin with Advent, followed by Christmas, leading into Epiphany, Lent, Easter and so on.
The Season of Creation, running from 1 September to 4 October, is an annual, ecumenical celebration of prayer and action for Creation that Christians on six continents have commemorated for many years.
This year as we approach the Season of Creation, in the midst of heatwaves, wildfires and droughts, we have been made acutely aware of how essential it is for us to take appropriate steps to acknowledge and respond to the climate crisis.
The theme for the Season of Creation 2026 is Living Water. The prophet Ezekial proclaims a vision for his world and our own: “Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish, once these waters reach there. It will become fresh; and everything will live where the river goes. . . . On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.” (Ezekiel 47: 9,12)
Ezekiel’s vision stands in sharp contrast to the reality of the water crisis we face. According to the United Nations, 1.7 billion people lack basic hygiene services at home, and 2.1 billion people still lack access to safe drinking water—that is 1 in 4 people on the globe!
So, during the Season of Creation we are invited to engage in contemplation alongside action through three interconnected steps:
- Contemplation: walk alongside a river, lake or beach. Or remember a time when you have spent time beside a body of water. Take some time to contemplate how the water flows and all the life that is sustained by the water.
- Immersion: engage with those facing environmental and social challenges caused by the climate crisis. Read up on or listen to stories from Christian Aid or Water Aid to learn about real people and real situations.
- Sending out: consider one action you could take as an individual or as a church: recycling more, litter-picking, creating or nurturing a community garden. When we each change one thing and encourage others, we can make a big difference for our beautiful planet.
I invite you to share these reflections and actions and thank God for Her life-giving water.
Peace and solidarity, Nicola
| CALENDAR | |||
| September | |||
| 5th | Saturday | 10am-3pm | HOPE PLANET – See poster |
| 6th | SUNDAY | 10.45am | Morning Worship led by Rev Phil Chilvers We shall be joined by our friends from Headingley Methodist Church |
| 8th | Tuesday | 12.30pm | Guild Lunch |
| 13th | SUNDAY | 10.45am | Harvest Festival & Children’s Book Service led by Edward Lyne Followed by Family Church Barbecue We shall be joined by our friends from West Park URC |
| 20th | SUNDAY | 10.45am | Morning Worship, including the Sacrament of Holy Communion, led by Rev Phil Chilvers |
| 26th | Saturday | 2.30pm | Ordination of Edward Lyne and his Induction to the Leeds Partnership Ministry Team at Wigton Moor URC |
| 27th | SUNDAY | 10.45am | Morning Worship led by Mrs Ann Coates |
CHURCH FAMILY BARBECUE
A reminder that on Sunday 13th September we shall celebrate our Harvest Festival and our Book Service for the children. And our Family Barbeque follows straight after Morning Worship.
All are welcome but it is a help to Susan Bollon, who organises the catering, if you can sign the notice in the Small Hall. Our worship that day will be led by Ed Lyne and it will be an opportunity for our congregation to get to know him a little better before his ordination and induction to the ministry team later in the month.
HARVEST GIVING
This Harvest we shall again support Zarach Bed Poverty Charity.
Zarach is a charity dedicated to raising money to support the estimated 900,000 children living in bed poverty across England. A Deputy Head Teacher at an inner-city Primary School in Leeds founded the charity in 2017, after being shocked to hear that one of her pupils was living in an unfurnished home with his mother and two siblings. He was always tired and struggled to learn because he was forced to sleep on bed bug infested cushions from an old sofa. Unimaginable circumstances for most of us to find ourselves in.
Zarach collaborates closely with schools and professionals in the community to support affected families to ensure good sleeping arrangements for years to come. They aim to improve a child’s ability to engage at school and to support their physical, emotional, and learning opportunities.
Please let Susan Bollon or me have your donations (cheques please, if possible) over the coming weeks up to the end of September. Cheques should be made payable to Zarach and Gift Aid forms will be available in the vestibule. Thank you.
Kate Henderson
PARTNERSHIP NEWSLETTER
You may have gathered from Ian Henderson’s email that the Leeds Partnership is proposing to publish a quarterly newsletter with news from all the churches.
Joan McShane has kindly offered to provide an article to be included in the first edition due in the next few weeks. If you feel you could provide an entry for a future copy, please let Ian know. It would be interesting to hear the news of our church from different points of view.
GUILD LUNCH
Our Guild Lunch comes early in the month this September, Tuesday 8th; meeting, as usual, at 12.30pm for lunch at 1 o’clock. Do think about coming if you are free that day. New friends are always welcome; the cost is £4 for a soft drink, main course, pudding and tea/coffee and biscuits.
Do you like visiting Art Galleries? When visiting Eastbourne last year the modern Towner Gallery housed a comprehensive exhibition of the work of Eric Ravilious who spent much of his youth there, but died as a relatively young man while working as a war artist. You may not know the name but you will recognise his work in woodcuts used in books and in calligraphy on chinaware. Simple, beautiful artwork, easily understood.
But many galleries house mainly old masters, many of the paintings inspired by Christianity; pictures of the Holy Family, the life of Christ and of the Saints.
The pictures of the saints are particularly intriguing for there is often a pictorial code reminding the viewer of the saintly qualities, the achievements or tortured death of that saint; St Catherine, with her wheel of torture, St Sebastian with his arrows, St Jerome with his lion.
Here is part of the description of ‘The Virgin and Child with St Peter & St Paul’ from the workshop of Dirk Bouts and in the collection of the National Gallery. ‘Two saints stand with them (the Virgin and Child) and the symbols tell us who they are. 
On the right, St Peter, a key peeping out beneath his robe. On the left, St Paul, (who often holds a book representing the epistles), stands by an arch against which leans the sword by which he was martyred. He offers the infant a delicate flower: a carnation. Carnations or pinks were often known as nail flowers as their scent resembles cloves and they are shaped like the nails driven into the hands and feet of Christ’. A host of stories and teaching within one painting.
St Jerome (c347 – 420) is remembered in September. He is depicted in various ways. Often working in his study, translating the Bible from Hebrew into Latin (the Vulgate) or writing numerous commentaries or teachings on a moral Christian life or writing one of his many letters.
Or he may be depicted in a desert with a long flowing beard as a pointer to the time he spent in the Syrian desert.
But I have to admit to always searching for a lion whether he is depicted in the desert or his study. Jerome is said to have removed a thorn from the lion’s paw and thus tamed him. Sadly, it is likely that exploits of the legendary Geronimus or Androcles may have become entwined with the story of the time Jerome spent in the desert and there was no lion in his life.
But his influence on the early Christian church cannot be disputed when the translation of the Bible into Latin widened its accessibility to the Western Church; a fearless lion of the early church.
To: All members and adherents of United Reformed Churches and our Local Ecumenical Partnerships
Dear Friends,
This letter is designed to give you an indication of the denomination’s central finances but is necessarily a brief over-view. Your church (or group) treasurer has a letter giving more detail which we are sure they will be delighted to share with you.
In recent years, on the Ministry and Mission (M&M) Fund, we have seen a gradual decline in church contributions and the shortfall on synod’s pledges have been made up by the synods themselves.
We are hugely grateful to the synods for their generosity but recognise this is not sustainable over the long term. It is also of concern that the weakness of church contributions weakens the covenant that binds us together as a denomination, namely that those with resources contribute to supporting those who have less.
The central URC budget for expenditure (for 2026) includes a number of areas of expected costs reduction, significantly in staffing. Some very hard choices have been made and implemented. On the other hand, the URC needs to buy in expertise that we need for our world of increasing regulation and oversight, in view of the scarce resources available from volunteers. We hope that at local church level you will take a moment to reflect on the expertise (paid and unpaid) that steers the URC through all we have to do to be compliant with complex regulation. (Please pray for us!).
We know you have some of these challenges at local level too. We hope that one of the outcomes of the Church Life Review and Church Life Fund going forward will be the availability of URC resources and advice that can be accessed by local congregations. Ask your Church Secretary about these and look at this year’s General Assembly decisions.
The annual audited accounts of the URC (for the year ended 31 December 2025) are now finalised and were published just before General Assembly. You can find a copy at https://urc.org.uk/trustees-report-and-financial-statements/
The accounts of the M&M Fund (the greater, but not only part of the URC Trust finances) show our total income £670,000 ahead of budget, but our costs were around £610,000 higher than expected. The deficit for the year on the M&M fund was around £650,000. We had hoped for much better.
So, thank you to all who continued to contribute to your local church, thank you to all those churches who met their commitment for 2025 in full, and thank you to all those who, in adversity, continued to treat the M&M Fund as the first priority and paid what they could.
If you have any questions or comments arising from this letter, please speak to your church treasurer who has been provided with more detailed information. If they are not able to help directly then they can get in touch with the finance team at Church House.
Yours in Christ,
Alan Yates (Treasurer)
Vaughan Griffiths (Deputy Treasurer)
