PASTORAL LETTER
To be read at all services on the Sunday before Lent, 14th February, 2010 in place of a sermon.
Dear Brothers and Sisters
This coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday when we begin the holy season of Lent and once again the Church calls upon us to observe the four customary disciplines of prayer, bible study, fasting and almsgiving. In past years, where your health permits, I have asked you to go without a meal on Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent and to send me the money that you have saved to go towards my Lent Appeal. I am asking you to do the same again this year. In addition, some people may wish to go without something that they enjoy like chocolate, meat, alcohol, tea or coffee as part of the Lenten fast.
In the past few years you have been very generous in supporting the Lent Appeal which has helped to set up a feeding programme for children and to provide a teaching facility for those being trained for Christian ministry among the poor in the Highveld in South Africa. Last year, the Lent Appeal raised nearly £19,000 towards providing Street Pastors in the Diocese and we now have 72 people trained and ministering to young people on our streets and this project will be ongoing. The project is proving a great success and I am most grateful to you for your generosity and support.
This year I hope that we shall raise £20,000 and I want to divide the money between two projects – one at home and the other overseas.
The project at home is the Churches Night Shelter for homeless people in Newport in which seven churches (three of them Anglican) open their doors one night a week and provide an evening meal and bed and breakfast for the street homeless who often come from other parts of the diocese and beyond. The Night Shelter needs money to provide bedding, cooking utensils and washing facilities, and to assist the participating churches with the cost of food and heating.
This is a wonderful example of the churches ministering to the poorest of the poor. Many of them come from broken homes and struggle with mental health problems and addiction. Some have physical health problems and nearly all feel a sense of isolation and hopelessness. Church volunteers not only provide them with food and shelter but with human kindness and love. In Matthew Chapter 25, we read of Jesus saying that when we minister to the hungry and the homeless, and when we provide clothing and care for the sick we do it for him.
The overseas project is to provide 2,500 bibles for new Christians in China. Every day 15,000 people in China are converted to Christianity and they long to possess a copy of the scriptures in their own language and to read about Jesus for themselves. The Bible Society can provide a bible for £4. For a family of new Christians, a bible becomes their most treasured possession with its life-changing message of hope. So often Christians in the West possess a bible but rarely read it, whereas new Christians in China are so hungry for God’s word that they will read their bibles every day. If we can give 2,500 bibles it will bring joy to thousands of people and give them strength in times of hardship and despair. It will also be a great encouragement to new Christians to receive such a precious gift from their Christian brothers and sisters in the Diocese of Monmouth.
As usual, I am asking churches to arrange to collect the money and to send it to me.
This Lent [or during the fifty days of Eastertide] I have asked the clergy to carry out a Visitation of their regular worshippers. This involves a priest, deacon or lay members of the ministry team, visiting your home for a brief service that will conclude with a prayer for God’s blessing upon your home – and you will be given a card as a reminder of the occasion. A leaflet is available for church members that explains about the history of Visitations and what to expect. It also provides an outline of the service.
Clergy will make their own arrangements for the home visits and I would encourage you to take part so that you can enjoy this personal ministry and receive God’s blessing upon your life as a disciple of Jesus, our crucified and risen Lord.
May Lent be a time of great blessings – a time when through your Lenten discipline, you will be a blessing to others, and when, through the home Visitations, God will be blessing you.
With my love and prayers,
+ Dominic Monmouth
NOTES
1. This letter may be reproduced (but it must not be edited without permission).
2. Cheques for the Lent Appeal should be made out to the ‘Bishop’s Mission & General Fund’. It is not possible to Gift Aid money to the Fund, but donors may pay their Lenten gifts to their PCCs through Gift Aid and parishes may pass on the money (with the recovered tax).
3. Please send cheques to Bishopstow, Stow Hill, Newport, NP20 4EA, made payable to the ‘Bishop’s Mission & General Fund’ by 30th June, 2010. The 2010 Lent Appeal will be closed on that date and any subsequent gifts will be credited to next year’s appeal.
4. Visitation Leaflets may be downloaded as a pdf. Leaflets and cards may also be ordered or collected from Bishopstow.