Welcome but....

Great that you found this blog.  We used it for a while, and we may revive it.  For now, all information on St Michael's church in Heliopolis can be found on our website and on Facebook.  See you there!

Chaplain of the bishop preaches this weekend

We have the privilege of having Rev Drew Schmotzer preach in St Michael's this Friday, 4 May at 11 am.  He serves our bishop Mouneer as chaplain.  To have Rev Drew preach in our church is a minor miracle as he is the most hard working person in Egypt.  So come and admire!

Friday 27 April: The Guinea Pigs

Peter Wilson and Jennifer Pariseau will be married in our church on Friday 27 April at 4 pm.  They are confident that all things will go well - even though they are my guinea pigs... Never before did I do such thing.

Members of St Michael's are of course warmly invited.  And anyone else!

It was nice to already meet with Jennifer's parents, her brother and his wife.  May they be blessed in Cairo.  

Of course, we also have our regular church service on Friday at 11 am.  Come twice that day!

Sunday 15 April EASTER SERVICE

Our English congregations meets on Sunday 15 April at 8.30 for an Easter Worship Service. 

It was great to enjoy Maundy Thursday with its gloomy end, and to ponder the meaning of the cross this Friday, but I look forward to celebrating the resurrection of Jesus!

Here a nice picture of me washing the feet of one of our highly esteemed members - Thomas - on Maundy Thursday.

Classical Music Concert 11 April

On 11 April, we will enjoy the Amir Zikri Opera String Quartet in St Michael's Church in Heliopolis.  Judith Snowdon will perform on the piano.  We look forward to a beautiful event with these professional musicians.

As this concert will be in the middle of Holy Week, the focus will obviously be on Good Friday.

Please come and enjoy, and bring your friends for this event.

11 April, 7-9 pm.
St Michael's Anglican Church
8 Seti Street, Korba
(off Baghdad Street)
Heliopolis

Easter Season in St Michael's

Be blessed.  Here our program for Holy Week.  Come and enjoy our worship service and our music concerts.

Friday 6 April: PALM 'FRIDAY' 11 am

Monday 9 April: Music Concert Peace Team: 7 pm
Tuesday 10 April: Better Life Concert for Sudanese: 7 pm
Wednesday 11 April: Amir Zikri and Opera Quartet: 7 pm (photo: Where is number four)

Thursday 12 April: MAUNDY THURSDAY [English and Arabic] 7 pm

Friday 13 April: GOOD FRIDAY [English and Arabic] 11 am
(including baptism of Maya Ternieden)

Sunday 15 April: EASTER English service 8.30-10 am

Rev Thomas Snowdon: overjoyed!

Coming Friday, 23 March, the Rev Thomas Snowdon will preach in St Michael's Church.  We look forward to this!

When we asked him to serve us with the Word, he burst out in laughter (photo, the one on the right).  His better half (photo, the one on the left) reacted more restrained.  If you want to know more, come and see for yourself - Friday 23 March, 11 am.

The pastor's office has moved...

A while ago, I already saw the writing on the wall.  We have a need for good classroom space for teaching and training members of our congregations.  And the only suitable space would be... yes, the office of yours truly.  This week I got some visitors who want to rent the space once a week, so allons, the time has come.

So I have moved to the small rooms behind the church hall.  Not bad, but different.  Hereunder a few pictures of the new office space.

In my old office, we will install a large LCD-screen tomorrow, to make the space as useful as possible for teaching and training groups.  A member of our Egyptian Sunday-evening congregation was able to get us a brand new Panasonic screen donated! 

Book Club Monday: Friendly Fire

This Monday, 5 March, our book group meets again at 7 pm. We will discuss Friendly Fire by Alaa al Aswaani.  For details and directions call Adrienne or contact our church office by email.  

More info on this author can be found >> HERE 

Ash Wednesday 29 February

‘Guard my life and rescue me; do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.’ Psalm 25:20

Do not miss our Ash Wednesday service at 7 pm on 29 February. We will celebrate together with our Egyptian and Sudanese congregations. So be prepared for a bilingual service. Would you participate in some form of fasting as well? I have decided to not eat any snacks at all, and to give up on alcohol for this period. And to use more time for reading my Bible. (pastors often suffer from the problem that they only read their bible ‘professionally’, like in sermon preparations. But to let God speak to me personally in this time of Lent is also important!)

Yes, we celebrate Ash Wednesday this week - we follow the Eastern calendar!

BBQ and AGM

Tomorrow after church, we will eat together and have our first AGM.  Is it not lovely? :-)
Please be sure to be there.  This is historic.  Our first one.

Greetings!

Jos

Friday morning with Stephen Sizer

This Friday morning we will celebrate our worship service as usual, but with Rev Dr Stephen Sizer as our guest speaker. We begin at 11 am. Welcome!

Good start of meetings with Rev Dr Stephen Sizer

On Monday evening we had Stephen Sizer speak at St John's in Maadi, where 150+ people showed up for a superb lecture with a great ppp. (The picture is of Rev Paul-Gordon Chandler introducig him) Lots of questions asked afterwards, appointments with some media made for interviews, books sold.

Book club: Aunt Safya and the monastry

This coming Monday, February 6, we will have our next book group meeting. We will discuss the book "Aunt Safya and the monastry" by Bahaa Taher. We will start at 19.00 at our house: 8 Seti Street, Korba. Maggie will lead the discussion.

Looking forward to seeing you.

phone: 01222400821
skype: esterair

Growth figures St Michael's

Here the statistics of attendance of the four congregations at St Michael's.

The first picture is of the Friday morning English congregation that we have begun on 1 September 2011. We The average number of attendants between September and December was 16 adults and 3 children. The trend is slightly upward, which is underlined by visitors in januari (17 adults, 21 adults, 2 kids each time)




The second picture is of our Egyptian Sunday morning congregation. We have an average of 24 adults and 2 children after 1 September. I do not have the stats from before September yet; the impression is that there were usually about 15 people in church. When I have some more precise data, I will publish those here. The trend seems to be rather stable.



The third congregation is our Sudanese, that meets on Sunday afternoon. The third picture represents their church growth this year. The first few months of 2011 were so problematic in Egypt that the numbers of visitors are not representative. Therefore I decided to compare April-August with September-December. The Sudanese congregation grew from an average of 153 to 183 adults, and from 66 to 88 kids in this period. The growth is stable.


Finally, we also started a new Egyptian Sunday Evening congregation on 1 September. The average number of adults is 24, while we had an average of 6 kids. Trend seems a bit downward, so we must work extra hard to knit this community together and get new people.

I thank God for His blessings this year. In our four congregations together, we have 79 new adults and 33 new children- may He continue to increase our ministry in numbers and in depth.

Lute Lessons at St Michael's

One of the members of our Egyptian congregations, Girgis Bishay, is a professional lute player. As from 24 January (Tuesday) he will give 12 lessons for beginners. These will be each Tuesday from 7-8.15 pm in St Michael's. More information on our website.

Epiphany

Dear friends

Tomorrow, 6 January, we celebrate Epiphany. Welcome at our worship service at 11 am. I promise to show you why the Egyptian wine and beer production companies almost went bust due to Epiphany. Well, otherwise the Muslim Brotherhood may take care of that.

And all of you who celebrate Christmas tomorrow, kullu sanna we antum bi khayr!