Church4All: Mothering Sunday

Pictured above is this month's Church4All team who prepared and conducted our Mothering Sunday service on 6 March 2016. Each person was involved in a different aspect, playing their part in bringing together a fantastic service centred around the theme of Mothering.

Each part of the service started with a letter and all the letters together spelt 'mothering':

Mary as a Mum

Others

Talking, Time & Tea

House & Home

Everlasting Love

Responsibility

Intercessions

Nurturing

God & Going out into the world.

We looked at how God is so creative in the way he builds our community and our church, and how we can all be good at 'mothering' whether we are mothers or not! Whatever our gender, age or status, the traits of mothering, nurturing, protecting, and teaching can be offered to us by anyone – and offered by us to everyone.

The Mothers' Union is open to all people, not just mothers - members from St Michael's do a great job in taking mothering far beyond their own families. We looked at how they reach out to others - Amy talked about how as a member of Mothers' Union she reaches out by helping at Toddler Group and Little Angels, and supporting other mums in the community who need her help. Lillian then talked about how spending time with people and talking is so vital to the work of the group and also the importance of lots of cups of tea!

The children then interviewed Muriel, asking her probing questions on how she reflected God's everlasting love by all the work she does in church and the community including Sunday Gang, Guides and Care Club at school. This was followed by an interview with Robin who wears lots of hats in his many roles as Church Warden, PCC Chair, chef for church events and his work at the children's hospice. Robin told a poignant story of how a parent had recognised him many years later as someone who had cared for her son in his final days and how Robin felt this had reflected God's everlasting love.

Beautiful prayers were written by Joyce and read out by members of the Mothers' Union. The children then gave out flowers to everyone in the congregation. A big thank you to Lois who provided the flowers - a lovely gesture by Lois who does this every year in memory of her own dear mother.

The service was a fantastic team effort and a lovely start to Mothering Sunday.