I am very privileged to chair the mission support group, a sub-group of the PCC which oversees the distribution of our outward looking (beyond the parish) mission budget. The group is supportive, committed and enjoyable – looking at ways in which we can use our resources (prayers, money, time, expertise) to bless others. The budget has recently gone up, which gives us even more opportunity to bless others. As it says in Psalm 112, we want to be those that ‘have given freely to the poor.’
At this year’s mission weekend we interpreted the ‘poor’ as those who need our help in Sheffield and so we invited three special, local charities to tell us their story and their client stories. We heard from The Golddigger Trust, the Archer Project and Snowdrop and were inspired to engage, learn, pray and give.
Recently, as a church, we considered how to engage with mission more effectively, looking at Luke 10 – the sending out of the seventy, the parable of the Good Samaritan and the story of Mary and Martha. Our mission support, hopefully, engages with all three of these emphases, but this year we particularly focused on the Good Samaritan. Each of the local charities works with people who we might not come across in our daily lives (especially the survivors of trafficking and the homeless) – but we have an opportunity to help ‘pay the innkeepers fees’ referring to v 35, the part of the story where the Good Samaritan offers to the innkeeper to ‘repay you whatever more you spend’.
So we hope that everyone who came to the weekend events was able to enjoy the ceilidh, the tea and scones and connect with our speakers. We are so grateful for the money raised. The current total for donations (including gift aid) is just under £7,300. We will be allocating this equally across the three charities. In addition we raised nearly £500 from the Friday night Ceilidh for Gold Digger Trust. Where we have received cheques specific to the individual charities we will be passing these on to them.
With love, Simon Musgrave