The Anglican Church of

St. Thomas, Kefalas.

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We are the only Anglican church on Crete. However, all Christian denominations are welcome at our services. We are situated within the Apokoronas area of Crete, east of Chania, in the picturesque rural village of Kefalas.

 

We hope that this website will guide you around the Parish - our worship, events and organisations and contact points for any further information.

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The Lord's My Shepherd

The Fourth Sunday

of Easter 

11 May 2025

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Good Saturday morning!

I am back from being off work due to illness for three weeks (including five days in the Chania General Hospital), getting just well enough by the 28th of April to go on a long planned, ten-day pilgrimage to Turkey (see further below).

 

My thanks to the Rev'd Dr Steven Smith who filled in for me on three of those Sundays, and to the parishioners who led the service on the 27th of April.

 

Thanks as well to the churchwardens, chaplaincy council, and other members in the congregation who kept things running in my absence.

 

A special word of thanks to Jan Lovell for sending out emails on Saturdays, making PDFs for the Zoom stream on Sunday, and hosting and facilitating the online study group.

 

Finally, thank you for all the prayers for me to get well.

 

Tomorrow being the Fourth Sunday of Easter, it is Good Shepherd Sunday.

The gospel is always a portion of the tenth chapter of John, in which Jesus declares himself to be the Good Shepherd.

 

The psalm is always the Twenty-Third, and the first reading this year is the passage in Revelation in which praise is offered to Jesus as the Lamb of God who is, paradoxically, also the shepherd

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Below are the readings for tomorrow. You can get the full text by clicking on the links, and if you click on "The Psalm and the Hymns" you can download a PDF of the lyrics and psalm texts for that day.

 

11 May

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

The Psalm and the Hymns
Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 23
John 10:22-30
 

Please join us at 11:00 am EET, either in-person or via Zoom. To get into the Zoom room click here, or, if you prefer, you can type or copy https://zoom.us/j/91269383194 into your browser, or, sign in to your Zoom account and use the Meeting ID: 912 6938 3194; there is no passcode, just a waiting room as a security feature.

As always, I pray that you and your loved ones have a blessèd week.​

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Bruce +

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Announcements

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​ Celebrating 1700 Years since the Council of Nicaea

 

On Monday, April 28th, I flew from Crete to Istanbul. I came to Istanbul for a ten-day trip in western Turkey with the “Anglican – Eastern Churches Association”. We were on a pilgrimage to celebrate the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. On our trip we would visit the places where the first four Ecumenical Councils took place: Nicaea (modern Iznik), Istanbul (ancient Constantinople), Ephesus (now an archaeological ruin and tourist destination, like Knossos), and Chalcedon (modern Kantikoy).

 

There were over sixty of us in two buses. In addition to our two Turkish guides, we were led by Fr Benjamin Drury, the priest of the Anglican Church of St. Paul in Athens and Canon James Buxton, the priest of the Anglican Church of St. John in Izmir. We were also led by the retired Anglican Bishop of London, Lord Richard Chartres, and His Eminence Nicetas, Orthodox Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain.

 

I got to know His Eminence quite well during the ten days. He was constantly correcting my Greek pronunciation and grammar 

 

We had Anglicans, Orthodox, Catholics and a few agnostic history buffs, mainly from Britain, but also from the United States, Canada, Europe and India. About half of us seemed to be ordained.

On our first full day we visited Agia Sophia, which was the cathedral of the Ecumenical Patriarch, built in the 6th century by the Emperor Justinian. In 1453, when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, it was converted into a mosque and most of the beautiful mosaics were destroyed or covered up. President Ataturk converted it into a museum in the 1930s, and President Erdogan converted the lower part back into a mosque in 2020. The upper galleries, where the few remaining mosaics are located, are still a museum, which tourists can visit when there are no services in the mosque section. 

Later that afternoon we had a meeting with His Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. I gave him, on behalf of the Anglican Church of St. Thomas in Crete, an icon of St. Theodore of Tarsus, made in Crete. Theodore was a Greek monk who became Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690. He seems to be a good symbol of unity between our two communities. I spoke to the Patriarch in Greek and he seemed to understand me.

In the days that followed we visited Chalcedon - now a very modern suburb of Istanbul on the Asian side of the Bosporus, with little of the ancient city left to see.  We also visited Nicaea, Pergamum, Izmir, Ephesus, and many other place

 

 I intend to write this up more fully in my blog in due course.

 

I will be talking about it at this coming Wednesday's online study group, to which all are invited.

We meet for discussion and prayer on Wednesday evenings at 7:30 PM for ninety minutes at

 

 https://zoom.us/j/95398454424 (Zoom Meeting ID: 953 9845 4424); no passcode is needed, we just use a waiting room as a security feature.

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SUMMER COFFEE MORNING  ON

SATURDAY, 7 JUNE

We urgently require offers of

DONATIONS OF BOTTLES & GIFTS FOR THE TOMBOLA, QUALITY SECONDHAND GOODS, & BOOKS
 

Many thanks
Mary & David

 

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​​​​​​  ​​Safeguardingin

the Anglican Church of St Thomas, Kefalas, Crete

If you see something that you think may be a safeguarding issue, you should speak to the
Chaplaincy Safeguarding Officer here on Crete or the Diocesan Safeguarding Team:

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Chaplaincy Safeguarding Officer:
Jan Lovell +30 69791 64716 jand.lovell@yahoo.com

and/or

Diocesan Safeguarding Team:

 For urgent enquiries during operational hours (9 am to 5 pm UK time, Monday to
Friday), please call: +44 (0)207 898 1159
For non-urgent enquiries contact: +44 (0) 7464 544715
For urgent enquiries outside operational hours call our
partners  Thirtyone:eight  on +44 (0) 303 003 1111. 
Email: europe.safeguarding@churchofengland.org
https://www.europe.anglican.org/resources/safeguarding-diocese-europe

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