St Andrews Baptist Church Weekly Bulletin
Sunday 21 September 2025
A warm welcome to all who are worshipping with us this Sunday—whether you are with us in person or online.
For Sunday service information, see below. You can access our services through our website (www.standrewsbaptist.org.uk)
This Sunday:
10am: Abi Ngunga will be preaching on “Revelation from God through vision 2”, based on Zechariah 1:18-21.
Hot Chocolate: during the morning service. A youth group for primary 7 and secondary age. See Emily Howat for more details.
6:30pm: Louise Younger will be preaching on “Asking: what do you want?”, based on John 1.
Rooted (P7–S2) and Impact (S3–S6) Youth Groups: 6:30-8pm and every Sunday. For details or to sign up, parents email rooted@standrewsbaptist.org.uk or impact@cornerstonestandrews.org.
CHURCH ACTIVITIES THIS WEEK:
Home Groups this week. See a leader after the services or email homegroups@standrewsbaptist.org.uk.
Wednesday:
tots+: 9:30-11am in the Room Downstairs (for babies and pre-school children with their grown-up). For further information please speak to Jane Harrison or contact totsplus@standrewsbaptist.org.uk
Balnacarron Service: 2:30pm.
Friday:
Admin in-office hours: 1-4pm.
Saturday:
Prayer meeting: 9am on Zoom.
Next Sunday:
10am: Abi Ngunga will be preaching on “Revelation from God through vision 3”, based on Zechariah 2:1-13. This service will include Communion.
6:30pm: Paul Grinyer will be preaching on “Asking: who do you say I am?”, based on Matthew 16.
NOTICES:
Transport Ministry: If you are struggling to get to church, or to healthcare appointments, email transport@standrewsbaptist.org.uk or leave a message on 07388 616629. The coordinator will get in touch with you, and we will do our best to help you where we can.
Find out more about being a deacon: The Church Annual Meeting includes election, or re-election, of deacons who serve in many practical ways, often behind the scenes. If you want to know more about what is involved and consider whether this an area of service for you, please speak to David Harrison or any other deacon to find out more.
Interested in Student Hospitality? If you are keen to meet new students and get to know better some of our wonderful returning students, please consider hosting 2 or more for lunch on Sunday 28 September. Please contact Tricia in person or email tricia@standrewsbaptist.org.uk
We are excited to enter into a new year of working with our young people! From now until Christmas, the “children’s moment” during our services will be focusing on “What if…” questions. “What if…” questions are questions that can spark creativity and prompt deeper thinking and allow us to explore fundamental aspects of faith. We hope that you gain as much from them as the young people! We look forward to sharing more about what we’re doing at Beacon Kids and creche as the weeks go by!
Adoption information evening: Sunday 21 September at 7pm, at 7 Allan Robertson Drive. Information about adoption need and process in Scotland. Please RSVP to natashaggraham@gmail.com
This year’s Harvest Thanksgiving with Messy Church and the St Andrews Churches Eco Network is taking place up at Craigtoun Park on Sunday 28th September. We’ll meet in the large white Picnic Tent (next to the café) starting with games and activities at 3pm followed by a seated family-friendly worship service beginning around 3.30pm. During the service we will bring forward items for the Harvest table so please bring one piece of fruit or veg with you for this. A warm invitation is extended to everyone to join us – it’s a joyful ecumenical event and there will be time to socialise with snacks and drinks (provided) after worship. For further details contact standrewschurcheseco@gmail.com
The Families First Board of Trustees and team would like to invite you to their 24th Annual General Meeting on Tuesday 30 September 2025 at 7pm in St Marks. Their AGM is a great opportunity to help them celebrate their achievements over the past 12 months and to find out what Families First has been getting up to. Papers for the AGM will be available to view on their website in due course: www.familiesfirststandrews.org.uk but please RSVP to officemanager@familiesfirststandrews.org.uk by Wednesday 24th September.
PRAYER ITEMS FOR THIS WEEK: Prayer points for 30-day prayer challenge for Israel-Gaza
Let’s pray with the BMS world mission for 30 days for the safety and peace of people caught up in Israel-Gaza war. Take just five minutes of quiet each day. Why not open and close each day with the words below?
Opening prayer:
Lord… we hear the news about the land called ‘Holy’ each and every day and we feel so helpless. We don’t know where to go to find even a hope that things can get better. So give us strength as we take these few moments, as we pray in the certainty that you love us intimately, that you see our hearts and also our tears, that you know our thoughts, that you hear our spoken words and those that we feel only able to utter silently.
Today we pray very specifically for…
Closing prayer:
Lord, strengthen us, hear us, help us keep faithful: as we cry out for an end to the war, and a recognition that we have to work with and not against one another. Particularly may this be true in communities in Israel and in Palestine and within governments. Lord, bring peace urgently, we pray.
SUNDAY: For Baptist churches in Palestine. For those who minister and serve, for each member. For practical needs when work is often difficult to find, especially since the start of the war. For those suffering from oppression within their communities because of reduced freedom of movement. For a generosity to be threaded through the fellowships and into their wider communities.
MONDAY: For organisations working in Israel and Palestine for a true reconciliation. For opportunities for representatives from different organisations to meet, such as the recent listening and learning event hosted by BMS and attended by Rani Saba from the Association of Baptist Churches in Israel and Shireen Nasrallah, who spoke from her perspective as a Director of Bethlehem Bible College and a Palestinian Christian.
TUESDAY: For the villages in the West Bank under severe oppression from settler communities and settler violence. For those in the south Hebron Hill, for those in the Jordan Valley, whose simple lives are threatened daily and who have no civil authority support or police protection. Thank God for their courage to stay resilient in the face of so many pressures.
WEDNESDAY: For BMS supporters writing to their own local MP. We pray they would be encouraged by a good response. We pray too for MPs, whether believers or not, to have a good understanding of their constituency and courage to use their leverage to challenge our Government at the top where necessary.
THURSDAY: We pray for Shireen Hilal, a Director from Bethlehem Bible College. We mourn with Shireen for her intensely painful experience of the war, losing a number of loved ones in the conflict. We pray you would comfort her, as someone who has witnessed the complete rupture to reconciliation programmes that used to encourage conversation between Israel and Palestine. We ask for strength for Shireen and that she would see you at work amidst the suffering.
FRIDAY: For Deir Al-Balah in Gaza. For those who believed it would remain a safe place when almost everywhere else was being destroyed, for them to face the latest bombardment from troops and from the air with fortitude. For them to find shelter. For their personal protection. For them to work as a community, looking out for their neighbours.
SATURDAY: For those working within leadership within the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and their representatives abroad. For true wisdom about finding a way forward, for courage to speak out morally even when unpopular, for an end to corruption. Pray for the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, for the personal pressure he faces, for those already lost from his own family within Gaza, for clarity when interviewed by the press.
The morning service starts at 10am, in-person and online, and includes crèche and Beacons Kids’ provision. The evening service starts at 6:30pm.
Items for the bulletin: Items for the bulletin should be emailed to bulletin@standrewsbaptist.org.uk (or leave a message on the church answer machine, 01334 472285) (by Wednesday 6pm)
www.standrewsbaptist.org.uk
ST ANDREWS BAPTIST CHURCH SCIO
is a registered charity in Scotland (SC053674).