After a long break due to the COVID19 pandemic, public worship begins again in our Benefice on July 19th.

The services will be open air, and initially will be every fortnight. We will meet in our churchyards, and though there will be no singing at first, we will celebrate communion together. Orders of service will be emailed to everyone on the Rector's Ramblings list, and there will be copies available on the day for others. 

We ask that people bring their own chairs or rugs to sit on, that every...

Our wonderful Benefice singers and musicians have done it again!

Following on from the amazing job everyone did with Thine Be The Glory, our terrific singers and musicians once again (all in isolation, recording from their own homes) have put another hymn together. This time, for Pentecost, they recorded Breathe on me Breath of God, to a tune by our rector, Revd Marcus Green.

Thank you to everyone who took part - may we look forward to even more?

We are all really feeling the pinch at not being able to get together and worship as a congregation in these COVID19 days.

So the Rector asked everyone, through his Rector's Ramblings email, to record themselves singing the hymn 'Thine Be The Glory' on their phones & send him the files. The result is a brilliant new video! The pictures are photos of our three churches taken in the first week of May 2020, and all the voices on the recording are from our Benefice as lots of people took the challen...

As our churches are closed at this time, our usual practice of decorating our places of worship with Easter gardens has broken out and spread to people's homes! Here are some photos sent in to the Rector's Ramblings email news during the last week. Thanks to everyone who sent these pictures - it's wonderful to see such fantastic creativity going on all over the place!

This year, because we weren't able to hand out Palm Crosses at church, people made their own - here's a selection of pictures sent in! Fantastic creativity shown here from all ages - and every parish. Well done everyone! 

Part Four takes us through Matthew 2 and the story of the wise men. There's a star, a journey, gifts, Herod, and all sorts of other stuff going on here. Thanks to the Cricket Club, Sustainable Steeple, Shirley Palmer & the Toddler Group for these amazing boxes!  

Part three of the Village Advent Calendar takes to Luke's account of the journey to Bethlehem, the shepherds, angels singing about the birth of Jesus, and at the end Mary ponders everything in her heart. Most of these boxes were done by classes at Dr Radcliffe's Primary School, with Christopher Compston bringing us the final one of the sequence. Thanks to everyone for such creativity! Such starry skies! Lovely sheep and great angels. I love the donkey too......

The story continues: now we swap from Luke's story about the angel appearing to Mary to Matthew's story, where Joseph hears what is going to happen. An angel appears to him in a dream and tells him to call Mary's son Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. The baby will be 'Immanuel', an ancient Hebrew word meaning 'God with us'. And Joseph believes the angel and takes Mary home. Thanks to the Shaylers, the Bellringers (whose box has sound effects!) the PCC and the Birds! 

 Our Village Advent Calendar is up and running! Thanks to everyone who has taken part. This slideshow has days 1-8, with the beginning of John's Gospel, then verses from Luke 1 depicted. Thanks to the Churchwardens, the Children's Church, the WI, the PCC, Bev Davies, the Brownies, Katerina Vernicos and the Steeple Aston Choral Society for their boxes! More to come soon as we move into Matthew's Gospel! 

This advent we are making a village advent calendar in Steeple Aston. 

We will be putting 25 large boxes around church, and would love village groups (or individuals) to decorate them. We have a scheme of 25 verses from the Bible which tell the Christmas story. Every day through Advent, a new box will be uncovered, revealing the next bit of the Christmas story. All the boxes have been donated from a removal company and are the same size - but how they are decorated to tell the Christmas story is...

In early 2014, Bob Clow bequeathed his 1950s bungalow to the PCC of Tackley.

We were astonished at his generosity and spent a lot of time praying and deciding what might be the best way to look after this incredible gift. A chance conversation with architect Kelvin Sampson led Rector Marcus Green to suggest that the PCC might do a brave thing...

Rather than simply sell the house and use the money for the parish, as seemed obvious, perhaps the PCC might develop the site of Bob's bungalow. 

Kelvin w...