Message from the Vicar

Dear Friends

By the time you read this we will have celebrated our own Harvest Festival. Also Boughton Primary School will have been to the Church to celebrate theirs as well. Hopefully all of the offerings will have been taken down to the Homeless Care Centre in Maidstone and we will have begun again our distribution of locally-grown apples thanks to ourfarming neighbours.

Harvest is fundamentally about thankfulness; we thank God for all he has
given us in the past and we praise God for sustaining our lives in the present. But thankfulness is rather hollow if we don’t have lives that respond in meaningful ways to God’s bountiful goodness. I realise that our culture is at best apathetic to the idea that God might provide for our needs, especially as our appetite for things keeps growing at a fast pace.

Recently I have been spending some time getting to know Park Wood in preparation for becoming their Vicar when Arthur Houston retires next year. I was very excited to discover that The Fusion Cafe, which runs many different life skills courses, also provides meals using food that would normally be thrown away by the Aldi Supermarket.

At the end of James Chapter 2 he says, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” James is convinced that we show what is in our heart by the generosity of our response to the needy person God places before us. Jesus tells a story about a wealthy man who could think of nothing better than constantly building a bigger and bigger empire. Sadly, as our culture becomes less connected to God and more self-absorbed, Jesus’ picture is the way most people see their priorities.

So in this season of Harvest, can I suggest we stop for a moment and ask ourselves about our response to God’s lavish generosity

Holy Communion

Every First, Third Sunday at 10:15 a.m. for 1hr 30m

Book of Common Prayer Holy Communion

Every Second, Fourth Sunday at 8 a.m. for 45m