Melissa

Melissa Hart has gone out to Kenya to work in a clinic for a couple of months.

To hear about how she’s doing, take a look at her blog, 99 Mosquitoes On A Wall.

99 Mosquitoes On A Wall

Sunday 19th December, 5:30pm – Family Carol Service, Nativity Play

Friday 24th December, 4:00pm – Crib Service

Friday 24th December, 8:00pm – Traditional Carol Service

Saturday 25th December, 10:30am – Christmas Day Service

Sunday 26th December, 10:30am – Sunday Morning Service

(No evening service on 26th December)

For the remainder of August, morning services will remain as usual, but the evening service of the 22nd will be held in the hall as a more informal bible study, and there will be no evening service of the 29th.

To fill the gap, why not listen to a sermon you may have missed?

Take a look at the website of Outside Light, ministering in Woking.

The AV team would like to know what your thoughts are on the technical work both during services and during the rest of the week – are speakers loud enough for the sermon? Are sermons and services accessible to listen to afterwards? Would you like members to contribute to the website? Click here to fill in the form.

Over the next three months we will be holding a series of informal discussion evenings. See the flyer below for more details.

If there’s a God, why doesn’t he stop all the suffering?

You can’t take the Bible literally, can you?

Why would a loving God send people to hell?

Anyone interested in knowing more about Fay Martin’s work in Afghanistan and her sudden and unexpected death may like to read the blog posted by her family, at http://thelifeoffaymartin.blogspot.com

All Christmas messages are available along with the Nativity play here and full services can be requested by emailing Rich Tervet.

A DVD is available of the baptismal service of 22nd November, contact Jon Grilli here.

Audio recordings of the whole service are also available, contact Rich Tervet here.

As the world marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, his influence on the world is as enormous as ever. Whatever you think of his ideas, there’s no doubt that they have shaped science and profoundly affected many aspects of contemporary culture. Darwin’s meticulous work established the natural sciences as a serious scientific discipline for the first time. If this was Darwin’s only legacy, he would still be a towering figure in the history of science. But for most people, his name is linked only with On the Origin of Species.

The new film Creation tells the story of how Darwin finally came to publish it in 1859, and the struggles that led up to that point. He had arrived at the essentials of his theory at least seventeen years earlier, but kept his ideas to himself and a few friends. One reason he delayed was because he wanted much more supporting evidence. Earlier evolutionary ideas had been highly controversial; Darwin feared the response to his work, so he wanted to be sure he was on solid ground. He spent eight years studying barnacles.

Creation shows that Charles Darwin was also concerned about upsetting his wife, Emma. She knew his Christian faith was dwindling, and was concerned that his scientific desire for hard proof was making things worse for him. The film also stresses two other factors: the ill health that plagued him for the second half of his life, and his grief over the death of his beloved daughter Annie, shortly after her tenth birthday in 1851. This event brought to a tragic climax Darwin’s questions about the place of suffering in God’s creation and he eventually became an agnostic.

Creation. The initial disagreement over On the Origin of Species was not primarily about what theological implications it may have had, but about whether or not the science was true. There were Christians and scientists on both sides of the debate.

Click here to view the full article.