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  • 18 May 2022

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You are here: Home / St Mary the Virgin Church

St Mary the Virgin Church

St Mary the Virgin is an ancient church standing in the centre of the village. The building may be ancient but the people of the church certainly aren’t! Our church is a community of people who are committed to serving the village, to working with other church communities in the Otter Vale Mission Community (of which it is a part) and sharing the message of God’s love for all in as many ways as we possibly can.

We are a warm and welcoming community offering a range of services to meet the needs of our community. Services are listed below, and in addition we have a Bible study group which meets on the 2nd Tuesday of each month and an Emmaus Group. Payhembury C of E Primary School hold their weekly service in church on Thursdays at 9.15am: this service is open to all the community as well. In addition there are occasional services and activities at special and significant times, and we are always adding to our activities and suggestions are always welcome.

Regular services:

  • 1st Sunday of the month 11am Morning Worship (Traditional matins)

  • 2nd Sunday of the month 10.30am Café Service at the Village Hall (an informal café style gathering with special activities for the children, good coffee and croissants)

  • 3rd Sunday of the month 9.15am Parish Communion

  • 4th Sunday of the month 9.15am All ages Service (an informal service with bacon butties!)

  • 5th Service of the month, joint service with Feniton and Escot see notices for information

Other monthly activities:

Home Group

Fortnightly on a Monday evening, 8pm at Tuckmill Cottage, Payhembury. We are currently a small group of ladies (at the moment!!) who meet fortnightly, taking the opportunity to discuss topical issues from a Christian perspective. We often use other material to guide our discussions and most recently have looked at a book called ‘Choosing Joy’. Plenty of points for discussion over a cup of tea or coffee! It is a very relaxed and informal time together, but hopefully an environment in which we can support and encourage one another too.

Emmaus Group

Meets every other week at 9.15am at Summerdale. This is another home group style group, very similar to Monday evenings group and some folk do go to both. Everyone is welcome to join us for an informal time of fellowship, discussion and support.

For more information about either Home group or Emmaus group, please contact Becky Gammon at beckygammon@btinternet.com

Baptisms usually take place during the All Ages Service and at other times on negotiation with Ottery St Mary Church Office

Contact : Rev. David Carrington,
The Rectory, Station Road, Feniton
01404 850905

To see details of current services please look at

http://www.payhembury.org.uk/whats-on/

 

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Reverend David’s May 2022 Message – Sea, Sand and Sabbaticals

April 28th, 2022

On May 1st, I will set my Out-of-Office and answer-machine, press the Pause button on my parish life, and step into a 3-month sabbatical. It will feel strange. “We’ve got rid of the vicar for 3 months!” you may think. In the summer of 2006 I stepped into a Waterstones bookshop in Brighton. We were holidaying in Sussex. My eyes were drawn to a vividly pink book, engagingly titled “Everything Bad is Good for You”. It was a wonderfully positive book about contemporary media culture, and reading it reawakened something in me, a fresh love for life and people and […]

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Filed Under: St Mary's Church

Revered David’s April 2022 Message – “I’m a Celebrity …….! “

March 28th, 2022

“Vladimir Putin knows the power of stories. With a better one, we can beat him”, reads a newspaper article headline today. With propaganda and fake news, the Russian president has woven a powerful false story about Ukraine for the Russian people. The Ukrainian people are experiencing an entirely different story. So against a backdrop of world events and our own conflicted lives, a topical story for Lent through which we currently travel.   “Welcome!” rasped the Devil. “Welcome to the Wilderness Trial of ‘I’m a Celebrity!’ And a special, special welcome today to you, Jesus. What a trial we have […]

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Filed Under: St Mary's Church

Reverend Davids March 2022 Message – Wind, Earth and Fire

February 28th, 2022

Storm Eunice rages outside right now. The trees sway madly. Pigeons cluster for shelter on the limbs of the horse chestnut sheltered by the neighbour’s towering, dancing conifer. Down the lane a tree lies prostrate, roots skyward. The recycling bins hide wisely in the garage. On an ancient mountain top, a man hears the wind scream around the rocky summit. Drained and depressed from life’s triumphs and tragedies, he stumbles from his cave to stand and take the full force. He feels nothing, just more numbness. As he did in the violent earthquake which came before, and would do in […]

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Filed Under: St Mary's Church

Reverend David’s February 2022 Message – Pictures, Memory & Stories

January 28th, 2022

I’ve just finished putting together a digital photo album for 2021. It’s now with Snapfish, and next week a beautifully printed hard-back album should drop through the letter-box. 2020 was my first of these – lockdown year needed its unique memories preserved. 2021 felt like a diluted version: horizons broadened but not much – what photos of interest would I have? And yet so many memories surfaced when I looked back, many of them seemingly insignificant, yet miniature treasures. A butterfly. The Feniton train emerging from mist. A Zoom celebration with distant friends. The Tour of Britain. The Archbishop! Dawn’s […]

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Filed Under: St Mary's Church

Reverend David’s January 2022 Message – Guiding Light

January 4th, 2022

“Hang on, folks – please!” It’s the Wise Men. “You’ve packed us away with your tinsel and crib, and we haven’t even got to Bethlehem yet! Caspar – how long does the SatNav say?” “Just recalculating, Melchior… here it comes, 3 months – that’s on Camel Setting”. “See what I mean, you good people of the future? You hurtle into the Christmas Sales like there’s no tomorrow and barrel into 2022, leaving us for dust (well, desert sand). S-l-o-w d-o-w-n! We didn’t get to our famed place in the Christmas story by rushing. No, we s-l-o-w-e-d, we looked at the […]

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Filed Under: St Mary's Church

Reverend David’s December 2021 Message – Light Wins

November 28th, 2021

The steaming Christmas pudding is placed ceremoniously on your dinner table. The brandy is sloshed over it (an extra one for luck). The lights are flicked off. A match is struck – and in the darkness the pudding flames dance with beautiful blue light. The last day of last December, and I’m on Hembury Fort to bid farewell in the closing daylight to an extraordinary year. A surprise snow-shower sweeps in. The light turns momentarily magical and mysterious, vivid brightness battling the dark clouds. December is a battleground. Light and dark – which will win? The Christmas lights go up […]

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Filed Under: St Mary's Church

Reverend David’s November 2021 Message – Hope in a climate crisis

October 28th, 2021

Climate change challenges my faith. It would perhaps be surprising if it didn’t – our Planet’s problems seem overwhelming. As Government leaders gather in Glasgow for the pivotal COP26 climate conference, I find I have to go back to basics. Sometimes that’s the best way. The reality of global warming has long been evident. Working in climate research 30 years ago made that clear – the basic physics is not ‘rocket science’. The global graphs of temperature would go up. A lot. How far and how fast, that was the question. Covid-19 brought graphs into our living-rooms. Graphs went up […]

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Filed Under: St Mary's Church

Reverend David’s September 2021 Message – Journeys, Archbishops and Planets

October 17th, 2021

“A single ticket from Feniton, please. To errr… the South Pacific.” “The Pacific, sir?” checks the man at the counter, “that’s very adventurous, if I may be bold enough to say. Is that business, sir, or are we on holiday?” “Mmmm, you could call it God’s business, I suppose”. “My apologies, sir, I see you’re a man of the cloth. So I’m sure He will bring you back safely to us, sir. A Return ticket, then.” “I’m not so sure! Let’s stick with One-way.” “Well, have a nice trip, sir.” It’s 1855, and John Coleridge Patteson leaves the Feniton family […]

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Filed Under: St Mary's Church

Reverend David’s August 2021 Message – Becoming our true selves

October 17th, 2021

I sat down last week at a low table in Feniton school hall. Nervously yet excitedly, individual children showed me in turn a portfolio they had compiled. It contained their evidence of activities they’d completed: active citizenship in the school, citizenship in the community, an active hobby and a non-active hobby, adventure training and charity work. This was their assessment for the Torbay and Devon Civic Award, rather like a Primary school Duke of Edinburgh Award. Us adults, socially-distanced across the hall, were their assessors. The children were remarkable in what they’d done, especially in this pandemic year. They warmed […]

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Filed Under: St Mary's Church

Reverend David’s July 2021 Message – Settledness

July 3rd, 2021

There is quiet celebration in the Carrington household this summer. Our house-moves over recent years fell strangely into a 3-year rhythm. This month we mark our 3rd anniversary of moving here – and we’ve no intention of going anywhere else. We are delighted at this more settled prospect. For you this may be for-better-or-for-worse! In some walks of life, regular moves are of course the norm. In my former training life at the Met Office, we liaised with the Navy’s meteorological training centre in Plymouth; a strong relationship with my opposite number would be building, only for them to be […]

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Filed Under: St Mary's Church

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