The second edition of the Stantonbury Ecumenical Partnership featuring news from our six churches has been published.
Welcome refreshments for pilgrimage participants.
The August newsletter reports on the successful SEP pilgrimage to each of the churches in early July as well as the latest position on the recruitment of a Vision Enabler and the retirement of the Rev David Lewis.
Plans for the Partnership to apply for Charitable Incorporated Organisation status are moving ahead. For more on this and the newsletter in full please follow the link.
The Rev David Lewis is set to leave the Stantonbury Ecumenical Partnership in October, after seven years as Baptist minister at Christ Church, Stantonbury.
David who, in more recent years has also assisted at St Andrew’s Church, Great Linford, is to retire
In a letter to all congregations he wrote: “It is with very mixed emotions that I write to tell you that I will be retiring as Baptist Minister in the Stantonbury Ecumenical Partnership at the beginning of October.
Christ Church, Stantonbury, minister, Rev David Lewis.
“I reach my 66th birthday at the beginning of February next year, but after prayerful consideration I have decided to take early retirement. My last Sunday in the Partnership will be on the second of October.
“Margie and I will be moving to Hampshire to live with our daughter Hannah, her husband Tim, and their family, on the edge of the New Forest. “We will be living in a self-contained annexe adjacent to their property.
“We are looking forward to our retirement there, and to being much closer to the family.
“But, as I say, it is with mixed emotions that I write to you, because I have thoroughly enjoyed my time as minister in the partnership, and Margie and I realise that we will be leaving behind many friends that we have made, at Christ Church and St Andrew’s, and in the wider partnership.
“Thank you for your friendship and support over the last seven years. The last couple of years or so have been particularly difficult ones, with the Covid pandemic affecting much of life.
“But I am so glad that we have taken the opportunities presented to us to worship and get involved in mission in some very creative ways.
“We don’t know what the future holds for us, as individuals, as congregations and as a partnership.
“But I am reminded that God tells us, through the prophet Jeremiah, that he knows the plans that he has for us, plans to prosper us and not to harm us, to give us a future and a hope. So we can hold on to that promise and put our trust in him.
“No doubt we will find ways of saying ‘Goodbye’ properly in the weeks to come.”
