LEIGH BAPTIST CHURCH “MESSENGER” OCTOBER 2025
VERNON ST / CHURCH ST . LEIGH. WN7 1BH
Website : www.leighbaptistchurch.org.uk Contact: admin@leighbaptistchurch.org.uk
Pastoral Leader – Val Hulme ( Days Off Tues and Fridays)
email : pastoral.leader@leighbaptistchurch.org.uk TEL 07817142192
Check LBC website for updates and info also LBC FACEBOOK page
Dates for your Diary:
Sun October 5th 10.45am Harvest Service Val Hulme followed by a Frugal Lunch *
Sun October 12th 10.45am Open Service
Sun October 19th 10:45 am Sunday Bible Study Val Hulme
Sun October 26th 10.45am Communion service Val Hulme
Wednesdays 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd & 29th October 10-11am Prayer meeting. Drinks at 9.45am
Wed 29th October Deacons' Meeting 11.15am
Other users of the building
Wednesdays throughout October 7.30pm All Singers Great and Small community choir
Thursdays throughout September 10:00am - 12:00pm: Atherton and Leigh Foodbank.
Wednesday 15th October 1:00 pm World Day of Prayer Committee Meeting
The Life you Always Wanted - a ZOOM bible English course for Hong Kong Believers in the UK.
Final session 7th October. 8pm-9.15pm. For the link, see the poster on the door in the foyer.
Our next Church and Congregation Meeting will be our AGM on Sunday 16th November after a shortened Bible Study Service. Please put this date in your diary. It is the meeting where we appoint deacons for the coming year and confirm roles/jobs within the church. As Jean will be stepping down from her role as deacon at the end of the year, and Val has stated her intention of stepping down from non Pastoral Leader responsibilities at the end of the year, this will also be the meeting where we agree who will take on those responsibilities. Continue to pray for God's guidance in appointing deacons and for people to step up to other roles.
Some of Val's "extra" duties include : organising lettings, dealing with renewing contracts, bookkeeping, issuing invoices, banking, renewing church parking permits; ordering paper towels, sugar sticks,
cleaning and other equipment from Nisbets; Designated Person for Safeguarding.
She will continue as Pastoral Leader with a view to retire by the end of June 2027.
* Jean is organising a Frugal Lunch to follow our Harvest Service. If you are joining us, please sign up so that Jean knows how much soup to make.
Fur Harvest gifts, we will collect tinned goods etc for the Foodbank rather than fresh fruit and vegetables. Items that the Foodbank needs are: instant packet mash potato, packet noodles, tinned meat, tinned veg, tea bags, tinned fruit, coffee, toiletries (soap, deodorant, shampoo etc) They have plenty of beans, rice, pasta and sugar, so please don't bring these if possible.
Any offerings received during the service will be given to the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS)Harvest Appeal, "Refugees Welcome", working with partner organisations in Cyprus, to help refugees fleeing their homelands.
Advance Date for your Diary
All Singers Great and Small will be performing their Christmas Concert at Leigh Baptist Church on Wednesday 10th December, 7:30 pm. Please make a note of the date in your diary. Tickets will be available by late October/early November, £5.00.
Harvest Time
‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart ------- In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths.’ Proverbs 3:5-6 (NKJV)
Let us think about harvest time and also look at ways in which that verse has proved to be true in the lives of some people.
Songs of Praise for Harvest was centred on a farm owned by a Christian family who always prayed for guidance in any situation. After Foot and Mouth disease had ruined their dairy farm, they had to have the courage to start again. They did so depending on God for guidance and now have a very successful farm.
When the time of harvest was shown with the vast fields of corn being reaped it brought back happy memories of my childhood watching the reaping of the harvest in the much smaller field behind our house, and then playing in the stooks which were propped up before the sheaves were stacked up to make the large haystacks. The singing of the harvest hymns at harvest festival really meant something to us, such as ‘Fair waved the golden corn’ and ‘We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land.’ It is a time to give praise and thanksgiving to God our Creator who provides everything we need for our daily food.
The harvest is mentioned in various books of the Bible. Leviticus 19:9 says, “When you harvest your fields do not cut the corn at the edges of the fields and do not go back to cut the ears of corn that were left.” The reason is given in Deuteronomy 24:19, “--- it is to be left for the foreigners, orphans and widows so that the Lord your God will bless you in everything you do.” In the book of Ruth we can read of those who were led by God in the fulfilling of His purposes. Having accompanied her mother-in-law, Naomi, back from Moab to Bethlehem after the deaths of both their husbands, Ruth went to glean corn from what was left after the barley and wheat were gathered up. She eventually married the owner of that field, Boaz, who was a kinsman of Naomi. They had a son, Obed, and their great grandson was King David. Jesus was from ‘David’s line’.
A favourite verse, especially for harvest time, is Genesis 8:22, ‘As long as the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will not cease.’ Chapter 6:5,7 says, ‘The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become.’ I will wipe mankind --- off the face of the earth.’ Noah followed God’s instructions to build an ark for himself and his family and the representatives of creatures of the earth so that they would be kept safe in the flood. After the flood God set a rainbow in the sky as a sign of a covenant he was making with Noah, ‘and all generations to follow’, that never again would ‘all life be cut off by the waters of a flood’, or ‘a flood destroy the earth.’ (9:11) Genesis 6:9 tells us that ‘Noah was a righteous man’ who ‘walked with God.’
In the New testament, Matthew 12:1 tells of Jesus and his disciples walking through a corn field and picking the ears of corn to eat. In Matthew 13 He used the parable of the Sower and of the reaper to illustrate how some people accept His teaching about the Kingdom of God and continue to be faithful to Him, but others either reject Him or fall away. In Matthew 9:36-38 we read that Jesus noticed the crowds thronging to see Him hoping for help and healing. ‘He had compassion on them because they were ---- like sheep without a shepherd.’ He said to His Disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the Harvest to send out workers into His harvest field.” We need to continue to pray that prayer as most churches need more workers to minister to the people at home and abroad.
As we sing praises in our churches this harvest time, let us be thankful for all the Lord our God provides for us, and with the change in the weather pattern these days remember the farmers and all who grow and supply the food we need and enjoy. And let us live by the words of Proverbs 3:5-6. KW