Services This Week
Dear All,
Services this week are taking place in person or via livestream through our YouTube Channel. Please find gathering times and service sheet links below and note that the Cambridge Town & Gown Run is taking place on Sunday, so town will be busy and you may require more time to get to church.
Friday 3 October
10.30am - BCP Holy Communion (Revd Dr Matthias Grebe)
Sunday 5 October / Harvest & Dedications Festival
11am - Holy Communion
Sermon: ‘Harvest’
Service Sheet: Here
Other notices:
Harvest Lunch: This Sunday we will be holding a harvest lunch after the morning service. Soup will be provided, but please bring sides/salads to share, if you are able – many thanks!
Volunteer Rota: In addition to the sign-up sheet in church, we are making it easier to volunteer by attaching an online rota with the weekly email here. (N.B. There will be an initial delay before access is granted to the form, in order that only church members can see and edit it.) Please do consider if you are able to help out in any of the ways listed – we are particularly in need of regular volunteers to set-up tea and coffee and stay a little longer after each service to wash-up/leave away. Many thanks!
Scriptorium has restarted in the church for Michaelmas Term 2025. This is a loosely structured time, bookended by prayer, of independent study for postgraduates, meeting 9am-4.30pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays weekly during University term-time. For more information, see here.
Season of Creation: This is the period in the annual church calendar, from 1 September to 4 October, dedicated to God as Creator and Sustainer of all life. It is therefore a particularly appropriate time to give thanks for God’s gift of creation and renew our own commitment to caring for it and stewarding it well. Resources to help reflect further on this can be found here.
Giving: We are grateful for all of your gifts! Offerings may be made via BACS (Sort: 20-17-19 / Acc. No.: 30851477 / Acc. Name: St Edwards Church), for standing orders, or the SumUp machine on the table by the door, for contactless giving. There is also a wall-mounted deposit box by the door for cash and/or cheques.
Exciting Holiness (Saturday 4 October):
St Francis was born in Assisi in central Italy either in 1181 or the following year. He was baptized Giovanni but given the name Francesco by his father, a cloth merchant who traded in France and had married a French wife. There was an expectation that he would eventually take over his father’s business but Francis had a rebellious youth and a difficult relationship with his father. After suffering the ignominy of imprisonment following capture whilst at war with the local city of Perugia, he returned a changed man. He took to caring for disused churches and for the poor, particularly those suffering from leprosy. Whilst praying in the semi-derelict church of St Damian, he distinctly heard the words: ‘Go and repair my church, which you see is falling down.’ Others joined him and he prepared a simple, gospel-based Rule for them all to live by. As the Order grew, it witnessed to Christ through preaching the gospel of repentance and emphasizing the poverty of Christ as an example for his followers. Two years before his death, his life being so closely linked with that of his crucified Saviour, he received the Stigmata, the marks of the wounds of Christ, on his body. At his death, on the evening of 3 October 1226, his Order had spread throughout western Christendom.
O God, you ever delight to reveal yourself to the childlike and lowly of heart: grant that, following the example of the blessed Francis, we may count the wisdom of this world as foolishness and know only Jesus Christ and him crucified, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
