New to the Church

Welcome to Heath & Holmewood

Hello, I'm Anette Love, the Vicar of Heath and Holmewood. Welcome to our website. On this site you will find a lot of information about our community. If you need any further help, please do not hesitate to contact the Church Office, or me! We are here to help you.
There are many activities which take place here during the week and at special times of the year. You can find out more in the Events section of the site
I’ll surprise you by saying that church is an exciting place to be - why not join us one Sunday; you will be given a warm welcome or send for a free copy of our ‘Back to church’ DVD
We hope that this website will give you a flavour of some of the exciting things happening and encourage you to come along and meet us in person. If you want to talk to someone about what you’ve read here, you’re very welcome to contact us at the church office, and we’d be glad to talk with you.

Bring in a Harvest After all the dreadful stories of hardship caused by the summer floods, this report made me smile.
The story is of a bride determined to get to her wedding in a village in Worcestershire cut off by the floods. Bride and groom were travelling from different parts of the country and each had to make diversion after diversion in order to reach the church. Whilst they were still on their way the vicar rang - he was stranded by floods and couldn't make it but he was arranging for a retired priest in the village to step in. Then the organist rang - he couldn't make it either but he'd try to make other arrangements. The bride was somewhat surprised then when she arrived in church, only half an hour late, to find, not only the groom but two vicars and three organists ready and waiting - everybody it seems had pulled out all the stops.
Fake Food I heard another story about a businessman who, before setting off on a trip to Singapore had been asked by his wife to bring back a fake Louis Vuitton designer shoulder bag. He searched but couldn't find one and ended up purchasing the real thing. When he returned home, he gave it to her saying, `Here's a genuine bag but you can pretend its fake when showing it to your friends.
Wildly expensive bags, shoes and jewellery bought to make us feel better - even if they are fake! If 40 is the new 30 and brown is the new black then fake is the new real. Last year more than 3 million British adults purchased fake luxury items costing billions of pounds.
False Harvest But fake doesn't just mean a great look at a great price - it means cheap labour for someone somewhere. The desire to have the right look at the wrong price means we are cheating real people; and there’s nothing fake about that.
What would happen if we went to fake luxury cars or houses - shoddy engines as long as the car looks nice or use substandard building materials as long as the house looked smart and upmarket? We have to have standards and the instructions for maintaining just measure and price when buying and selling is there in both the Bible and the Qur'an.
Harvest of love So what in aconsumerist culture is the meaning of harvest We used to buy things hoping they would last. Now we buy and throw away in favour of the next new model. (And that can apply to marriages as well). The Bible has a word for this. It's called idolatry. In ancient times people worshipped the gods of the sun and rain hoping they'd bring a good harvest. Today we sometimes worship the shopping centre and the property pages hoping they'll bring happiness. We thought the result would be affluence. Instead what we got was affluenza: that strange condition in which the more we have the unhappier we become.
Oscar Wilde defined a cynic as one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. We're in danger of knowing the price of a house, but forgetting the value of a home; of eating until we can’t fit in our clothes any more, but still feeling unsatisfied. When the world is so unpredictable we need an ark of safety and security and God who allows the flood, also provides an ark of love. An ark of security a Harvest of love
Come ye thankful people come, raise a song of Harvest home!
A real Harvest!
Anette Tel 850339

New to Church?

If you’ve not been to church for ages you may well be wondering just what sort of things happen in a service, whether you’d feel comfortable with us and what, if anything, might be expected of you.
We are quite relaxed at here and we don’t expect you to join in with anything that makes you feel uncomfortable. If you want to join in with the singing and other responses, that’s great, but if all you want to do is sit and watch, that’s fine too.
Our 10.30am service is happens in St Albans in Holmewood. We encourage families to come to this service and a Sunday club for children takes place during the service, so that the children have their own space and time of learning together. The style of the service is relaxed and all the words all of the songs and readings appear on the PowerPoint screen
The 6.30m service takes place in All Saints, Heath and is more traditional in form.
When you arrive at church you should find there is space to park. Most people arrive up to about 10 minutes before the start of the service. On the way in, someone should greet you and give you a notice sheet. There is full wheelchair access into both the church buildings and we have a wheelchair-accessible toilet in St Albans. If you have any other accessibility needs, let us know and we will do our best to help.
After the service you could just quietly leave, but we’d love you to stick around for a bit and introduce yourself to a few of us. Tea and coffee are served after both the services.

Thinking about faith?

You may also be wondering what sort of things you might be asked to believe ….so
What is a Christian?
Christianity is often thought of as a cultural thing, something you grow up with or something that is more along the lines of tradition. It is often thought of as something which isn’t really true but personal and subjective. But we think that when the Bible talks about the truth of the Christian message, it describes it as a truth which is really true, and not tied to personality, culture or experience. You may have different views and that’s something we could talk about together.
Christianity could be described as a living relationship between a person and God, where that person has moved from knowing about God distantly, to knowing him personally through Jesus.
If you are new to the Christian message, there are, no doubt, questions about the Christian faith which may keep you at a distance. We believe that Christianity does stand up to rigorous questioning we ask of it, just as it aims questions at us!

Open to Question

If you are looking for a round-table place to ask questions of the Christian faith or if you want to refresh your own convictions, then come along to an Alpha course or a ‘Thinking about Faith’ discussion group. We aim to treat all questions with respect and welcome honest and blunt questions – we are not easily offended!

More information
Book a place on the course