02/12/2022
The service for the Second Sunday of Advent includes prayers speaking of how God is present everywhere in urban life - including pubs, parks, play areas and high rise blocks.
The service, led by Revd Polly Kersys-Hull, Vicar of Holy Trinity and St Augustine of Hippo in Leytonstone, east London, and Revd Sarah Moss, Curate at Holy Trinity and St Augustine of Hippo and St Andrew's Leytonstone, will also hear a prayer for estate churches’ practical support to their communities through work such as ‘warm hubs’ for people struggling with energy bills and oversubscribed food banks.
The Bishop of Barking, Lynne Cullens, (pictured immediately above) who will deliver the sermon, urges the church to base itself on Christ - “not on self”.
Reflecting on John the Baptist, she will say: “All who are held down, isolated, loveless, or unheard, John's is the voice that cries out from the wilderness calling us to be a people, a church that is preparing a way for the Lord, straightening his paths.
“And the challenge in this season of repentance is for us to look first within the church itself to make good that which is of division or discord or injustice.
“And thereafter to look out into the world, to do the same, to be a community of faith producing good fruit and a fellowship based on Christ, not on self.”
• The Bishop of Barking is Chair of the Estates Evangelism Working Group and the National Estate Churches Network. The Church of England’s national online service will be broadcast at 0900 on Sunday December 4.