Shaw Church

Welcome

We are the Church of England parish of St Mary’s Shaw cum Donnington – just to the north and east of Newbury.

Our purpose and focus is Knowing Jesus, Sharing God’s Love, Caring for People.
You can read more about it here.

We meet every Sunday at 10am, as well as at other times during the week.
Everyone is welcome to join us.

Word for the Week

• Easter Eyewitnesses17 April 2025

  Luke’s preface tells us that he has interviewed the eyewitnesses and written his Gospel so that its first reader, a man called Theophilus, can be certain that what he has been taught is true. But one odd feature of the resurrection story he tells is just how slow the first disciples were to believe that it had really happened. The women who came to the tomb are gently rebuked for forgetting (or perhaps misunderstanding) Jesus’ own prediction that he would rise again. The Apostles do no better – they dismiss the women’s story as ‘nonsense’. Even when Peter goes to the tomb himself and finds it empty, he is slow to jump to conclusions.

  The idea of a dead man coming back to life was as extraordinary then as it is in 2025. But Luke reports that all those people – the women, the Apostles and Peter – swore to it that by the end of that first Easter Sunday they had all met the risen Jesus face to face. In our moments of doubt, it is worth asking ourselves what we think changed their minds and what it would take to change our own.

  Ed