Welcome to Wokingham Methodist Church

Café Mosaic - new opening hours
   Tuesday - Friday, 9.30am-1pm, from 1 October

Monday Evening House Group restarts 7 October
   1^st Monday each month, 7.30pm at a member's home

Wednesday Worship, 2.30pm monthly, starts 26 June

10.30am BST Morning Worship - Revd Catherine Bowstead

Future worship and recorded services are on this page.

A Reflection from Kim Tame

Dear Friends,

Colin and I have spent a few days in Canterbury, a place full of history and interest.

One of our visits was to St. Martin's church, a little way out of the town centre, and the site of the oldest church in the English-speaking world.  This little church is associated with the 6th century Christian Queen Bertha.  She had married the pagan King Aethelberht of Kent on condition that she could continue to practice her faith.  He gave her a Roman church as her private chapel, and this later became St Augustine’s base for evangelising Anglo-Saxon England.  

The mission that began in this humble setting was to grow to be very large; what remains of St Augustine’s Abbey is almost next door, and St Martin’s rather grander daughter-church – Canterbury Cathedral – is just a few minutes’ walk away. 

The tiny church of St Martin’s has been extended and repaired at different times but retains many very old features; including a “squint” – a tiny window at the back that lepers could use to view the service when they were not allowed inside the church.  It’s a peaceful place; the tiny church building, surrounded by a churchyard filled with trees and birdsong, is set back from the busy road.

An unexpected discovery was that we stayed in a hotel where Mary Tourtel, the creator of Rupert Bear, lived for the last ten years of her life.  She is buried in the churchyard of St Martin’s, alongside her husband, and if you stand on the terrace above the grave, you can just about see Canterbury Cathedral through the trees.

We also visited the Cathedral, of course, and tried to take in the centuries of history, and the often-turbulent relationship between church and state represented there.  I wonder what Queen Bertha and St Augustine would think of what has become of their efforts to make this country Christian?

This Sunday is the third Sunday of Lent.  Our morning worship will be led by Local Preacher Maggy Garton.

A Reflection from Malcolm Ray-Smith

As long as the earth endures cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.

On a particularly frosty morning I noticed how rapidly the frost disappeared as the rising sun reached further across the lawn at the back of our house.

The warmth of the sunshine melted the frost in a matter of moments as the angle of the sun’s rays reached new areas of grass; in just a very few minutes what had been white turned green.  The air was cold to my skin but the warmth in the sunshine had power to melt the hoar frost very quickly.

Heating engineers can assess what specific extent of radiators are needed to bring warmth to the various rooms in our homes or in offices or our church.  Recipes recommend how much heat different foods require, and for how long to achieve optimum results.  Many industrial processes need a lot of heat and consume vast quantities of fuel to bring to a conclusion but the massive extent of our consumption of fuels has induced the overheating of our global atmosphere to the point of crisis which requires us to choose new priorities.

When I google “heat” I am introduced to the laws of thermodynamics and friends of a scientific turn of mind will grasp concepts that elude simple minds such as mine, but while heat is welcome when we are cold, too much of it burnt the cakes thar King Arthur had been asked to watch over.

Warmth (or lack of it) in our personal relationships can be very significant.  We feel very excluded if a friend gives us “the cold shoulder” but we can lose control of our mouths when in a heated debate we “lose our cool” by being “hot tempered”.  In church life we like to enjoy “warm” fellowship with other believers, and it is good to spend time greeting old friends and making new ones.  When I first began to worship at Rose Street I was very struck by the warmth of welcome and one man, Albert Beasley, who made a point of shaking my hand every week.  The warmth of our greetings to others is an important element of our witness.

Genesis chapters 8 to 9 tell the story of Noah and the flood and verse 22 of chapter 8 records the promise God made: As long as the earth endures cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.

Some previous Pastoral Letters are available here.