Dear St Mary’s, 

On Sunday 30th November – the First Sunday of Advent – we will share Holy Communion at 9am and again at 10.30am, with Revd Vanessa Conant presiding and preaching at both services. At 10.30am, there will be two baptisms, and six children will be admitted to Holy Communion. This Sunday, we will also light the first candle in our Advent wreath. 

There will be no children’s groups at this week’s 10.30am service but children are invited to stay in the service with their parents/carers as we begin the season of Advent together. 

Advent marks the beginning of the Church year and first emerged in the fourth and fifth centuries; it lasted, like Lent, for 40 days, and is still sometimes called ‘little Lent’ – a time of preparation for the great feast of Christmas in which we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Later tradition developed the Advent we know today, of four Sundays before Christmas Day. 

As the Church of England writes, ‘(Advent) is a season of expectation and preparation as the Church prepares to celebrate the coming of Christ. Church decorations are simple and sparse, and purple is the traditional colour used. Advent falls at the darkest time of the year, and the natural symbols of darkness and light are powerfully at work throughout Advent’. 

Vestry Sessions Presents Christmas Revue and Singalong Tonight, 27th November 
Our music partners are back at St Mary’s tonight (Thursday 27th November) with a Christmas revue and singalong; there will be mulled wine and a festive musical tasting menu. Tickets are £11 and available here or by visiting wegottickets.com. 

St Mary’s Christmas Festival This Saturday 29th November + Volunteering 
St Mary’s Christmas Festival will take place this Saturday 29th November, 10am-5pm, with a Christmas craft market in the church and a Santa’s grotto and kids’ zone in the Welcome Centre. There will be games, food vendors, mince pies, a brass band, wreath-making workshops (booking required) and some very special surprise visitors! Details are at stmaryswalthamstow.org/christmasfair. Also, if you’ve offered to volunteer, our events administrator, Louise Wallis, will be in touch. We hope to see you next Saturday! 

Bottles for Fundraising ‘Bottle Tombola’ Needed Before 29th November 
We will be raising money for St Mary’s at our 29th November Christmas Festival and are still collecting bottles – everything from wine to ketchup to shower gel – for a bottle tombola. Thank you for bottle donations this past Sunday; if you have yet to drop a bottle off but would like to help us raise funds by donating a bottle or two, please bring your bottle(s) to the Parish Office before Saturday, or email . 

Youth Christmas Social on Sunday 7th December, 5pm 
Our young people will meet on Sunday 7th December, 5pm-6.30pm, in the Welcome Centre for a Christmas social featuring Christmas games and festive fun, with Christmas jumpers encouraged! If your child is interested in joining us but hasn’t attended our youth group in the past, email Revd Jacintha Danaswamy for details at . 

Advent and Christmas 2025 at St Mary’s 
Join us for Advent and Christmas 2025 at St Mary’s and in the Parish of Walthamstow. In addition to our four Sunday Advent services (9am and 10.30am) – which begin this Sunday, 30th November, and run until Sunday 20th December – we will have special services throughout December, including two evening carol services, three Christingle services and a 10.30am Christmas Day Family Communion service for the whole community. None of our services this year, including our two popular carol services, will require booking, with the exception of our Quiet Christmas service for neurodiverse children. For full details on all of this year’s Advent and Christmas services, please visit stmaryswalthamstow.org/christmas. 

Join St Mary’s Community Christmas Choir 
Join our Community Christmas Choir which will perform at our Carols by Candlelight service on Sunday 21st December at 6pm. There are two main rehearsals for the choir – one at 7pm on 12th December in St Mary’s Welcome Centre, and one at 7pm on 19th December in the church. There will also be an additional rehearsal on the day of the service. Sign up for the choir here or by visiting stmaryswalthamstow.org/ChristmasChoir2025 – and please feel free to invite neighbours and friends to join you in the choir! You can also listen to the choir pieces and learn the parts prepared by Jonathan and Helen Rathbone here. 

More Volunteers Needed for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Services 
Many thanks to everyone who has signed up to volunteer as we prepare to welcome over 2,000 people to St Mary’s for our special Advent and Christmas services. Whilst we have plenty of volunteers signed up to help at our carol services, we’re still short on volunteers for our three Christmas Eve Christingle services. We also have gaps we need to fill for Midnight Mass and Christmas Day. If you can help, please email . 

Carols at Whipps Cross on 23rd December at 5pm
We’re pleased to join the Whipps Cross Interfaith Chaplaincy for carol singing to staff and patients who are working or staying in hospital over Christmas. Together with friends from St Peter’s in the Forest, St Barnabas and Holy Trinity Leytonstone, we will try and bring some Christmas cheer to the wards. A group will walk from St Mary’s at 4.30pm or you can meet us at the Whipps Cross Chapel, 1st floor, Junction 5, at 5pm. Please email Revd Vanessa Conant at if you are interested in joining us. 

St Mary’s School Forms
If you have recently joined St Mary’s because you are considering putting in an application for your child to attend St Mary’s School – welcome! We are delighted that you are exploring life at St Mary’s Church and pray you will find a place of belonging in our community. Please note that all school forms and enquiries need to go via our Parish Office (please email our administrator Josie at to arrange signatures). In general, school forms need to be completed in full before they are signed, including your level of church membership; however, you will need clergy agreement in order to select ‘at the heart of the church’ as this reflects a long-standing commitment to our worshipping community. 

Giving Monthly to St Mary’s 
Your financial support is crucial as we work to keep St Mary’s ancient building open to the whole community throughout the week, to support Walthamstow and to share the love of Christ with all. Your donations make this possible as we receive no direct, ongoing support for the day-to-day running of St Mary’s from the Church of England or from the government. Monthly giving is particularly transformative as it allows us to plan, budget, and even expand our work in the community. If you would like to become a monthly giver, we would encourage you to sign up via the Parish Giving Scheme which you can find here or by going to stmaryswalthamstow.org/donate and clicking on the Parish Giving Scheme link. 

Safeguarding 
St Mary’s takes safeguarding seriously and works hard to ensure that our church is a safe place for everyone. If you see anything that concerns you at St Mary’s, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our Safeguarding Officer Emma Clements at . You can also contact the Diocese of Chelmsford at or Waltham Forest Council at 020 8496 2310. 

EcoTip: Call on our MP to Back Community Energy 
The campaign group Power to the People writes: ‘There is huge untapped potential for more smaller-scale renewable energy schemes that could be owned and run by local people. Realising this potential could bring much more clean, cheap and secure energy to local homes and businesses, creating new local jobs and keeping wealth within local areas. But the potential for growth is blocked by the rules that govern the energy system.’ MPs are now being asked to sign a cross-party Early Day Motion – EDM 2151: Buying Community Energy Locally – which calls on the Government to ‘expeditiously implement local supply rights for community energy schemes’. Sign up here to get updates on the bill here or visit powerforpeople.org.uk. You can also email our MP Stella Creasy, who has yet to sign the Early Day Motion, at . 

Please pray this week for:

• Efforts to reduce violence against women and girls
• Those in need of work and opportunities – for training and support 
• At-risk young people, for their safety and wellbeing 
• Efforts to ensure that the wealthiest in society pay their fair share in order to fund public services and alleviate poverty 
• St Mary’s as we host BBC Radio 4’s ‘Any Questions’ on Friday 28th November and also as we host our Christmas Festival on Saturday 29th November 
• Our church community and the whole of Walthamstow as the season of Advent begins – that many would encounter and experience the love of Christ 
• All who are unwell in body, mind or spirit, and for those who care for them 
• Children and young people being admitted to Holy Communion this Sunday 
• Refugees and asylum seekers – that Christ would be close to them this season 
• Places of war and violence around the world, including Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza: for a just peace, and for humanitarian aid to reach those in need 
• Churches ministering in conflict zones and places of tension 
• Doctors, nurses and medical professionals in the UK and around the world, especially those serving in communities with significant needs or in areas of conflict 

Reflection: ‘More Than Decoration’ 
Revd Andrew Stewart, vicar of St Gabriel’s Walthamstow, writes: 

In Advent, there are two comings: the coming of the Christ child at Christmas, and also the coming of Jesus Christ at the end of time. In this way, Advent begins the new Church year by telling us how the story ultimately ends. The season reminds us where everything is heading: the reunion of heaven and earth – the healing of creation. Only after we glimpse the end do we circle back to the beginning, when Jesus steps into our world as one of us. 

And so it is fitting that this year, at my church, St Gabriel’s, we will have a symbolic reminder of heaven and earth moving toward their long-awaited reunion in Jesus Christ. A member of our congregation is creating a display of a thousand angels. These angels will soon, we hope, be suspended above the nave, descending toward the Nativity scene.

Like the actual angels themselves, they are more than decoration: they point us beyond ourselves and cause us to look up. And the heavens are no silent void – not the empty, unsettling ‘outer space’ of modern imagination – but full of life, worship, and service.

As Psalm 8 and Hebrews 2 remind us, Jesus is made ‘for a little while lower than the angels’, taking on our full humanity. Jesus Christ is the Ladder (John 1:51), uniting heaven and earth, and yet he comes in weakness – a newborn Child, born in an unexpected place at a turbulent time. 

The angels lead us to him because, in Christ, heaven and earth are joined. In Advent, we are invited to be a people who cultivate our longing for this future reality – a world of healing and wholeness – and who also attend to the glimpses of this future in our daily lives. 

So may you be prompted this season to look heavenward with expectation and joy, assured that our story ends in healing, redemption and wholeness. And may canopies of angels bless you with hope for our everyday, where Jesus – the one who bridges heaven and earth – lives and reigns, walks alongside us, teaches us how to live and guides us into peace.