Welcome to Shaw Church
The Parish of St Mary’s Shaw cum Donnington
We are a community of Christians bringing the Good News of God’s love to everyone in the parish, through Worship, Prayer, Teaching, and Serving.
We invite you to come and join us as we gather to worship God on Sundays at 10am, or in any of the other things we have going on.
Shaw cum Donnington lies to the north of Newbury in Berkshire, and St Mary’s Church is in the middle of the parish, just to the East of the A339.
You can find more about us and what is going on through this website, and do get in touch with the Church Office if there’s anything we can help you with or if you would like more information.
A word for the week
- Without Him we can do nothing!
Both our passages of Scripture this week (John 15:1-8 and Romans 11:11-24) are based on horticultural metaphors. I’m not much of a gardener myself, but both of them are really helpful for showing us the dependent nature of the Christian life.
In John, Jesus describes himself as the vine and us as the branches. We need to abide in him, draw our life from him, bear fruit through our union with him, because without him we can do nothing. In Romans, the people of God and their covenant relationship with God are likened to an olive tree into which Gentiles have, rather surprisingly, been grafted. Again, we are reminded that we branches do not support the tree’s root, it’s the root that supports us.
One obvious application of this is to be humbled. Each of us (me included!) would be helpless and bereft without the life we receive in and through Christ and the sure promises God made to his ancient people. We have nothing at all to boast about – except God’s marvellous kindness!
Ed