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Lent Course 2026

A course about real life and real faith, inspired by the BBC TV series Broken with Sean Bean. Devised and written by Bryony Taylor, Rebecca Tobin and David Twomey.
Each session will last around 90 minutes, and will include reflective prayer activities, bible reading and an opportunity for discussion and questions.

The aim of the course is to help us engage with the realities of life, and how they can be framed by faith in Jesus Christ. As Leonard Cohen said: ´there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in’.

The themes for the 6 weeks are:

• Beauty in the ordinary
• Loving the unlovable
• Guilt and shame
• Impossible situations
• The power of Holy Communion
• Is the Church still relevant and needed today?

Dates: 19th 26th Feb, 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th March.
Each session is stand-alone, so you don’t have to come to every one.
For more information contact Mtr. Fiona +34 623 39 24 99

Mtr Fiona’s December 2025 Newsletter

Pentecost 2026 Acts 2. 1-21

I don’t know whether you’ve ever found yourself somewhere where you couldn’t understand the language around you, where every sign, every announcement, every conversation seemed beyond your grasp. For me, the most disorientating experience of that came during a trip to Japan. I could recognise absolutely nothing. The station signs looked like patterns rather than words, the announcements were incomprehensible. I remember standing on a packed railway platform surrounded by a cacophony of sound that I simply couldn’t decipher.

Then suddenly, through all the noise, I heard someone speaking English. The voice came through with astonishing clarity. Instantly I relaxed. The tension I hadn’t even realised I was carrying began to dissipate. It felt as though a small doorway had opened in the middle of the confusion and for a moment I had come home.

I suspect many of us here today know something of that feeling. We are gathered as Anglicans and Lutherans, English and German speakers, as well as a host of other languages, people who have made homes here in Tenerife while carrying memories, habits, humour, prayers, and longings from somewhere else. Some of us came seeking sunshine and a gentler pace of life. Some came through circumstance, retirement, work, love, or necessity. Yet even in a beautiful place there are moments when being an immigrant can feel strangely lonely.

You can miss the ease of understanding everything around you. You can miss the shorthand of your own culture. Even though I speak Spanish, I still sometimes struggle to find things in the supermarket here because they’re not in the place where I expect to find them.

The Pentecost story speaks right into that context. The miracle isn’t that the disciples speak in tongues. The deeper miracle is that people hear the good news in their own language -and Luke carefully lists them. Jerusalem at Pentecost was full of travellers, migrants, pilgrims, visitors, people living between worlds.

And suddenly, they hear the works of God spoken in words they can understand. Imagine what that must have felt like for someone who had not heard their native language in months or years. Imagine hearing the voice of God – not in an imperial language, not in a language of power, but in your mother tongue.

Pentecost tells us that God doesn’t wait for everyone to become culturally identical before speaking to them. The Holy Spirit is apparently far more multilingual than the Church often is!

Sometimes Christians have behaved as though faith requires people to leave part of themselves at the door: their language, their culture, their history, their questions. Pentecost moves in the opposite direction. The Spirit honours difference while creating communion. The crowd doesn’t suddenly all speak one language. Instead, each hears the gospel in their own tongue.

Unity, in the kingdom of God, isn’t sameness, but harmony, a bit like this island. Tenerife is full of different accents, stories, histories, and nationalities. Canarian traditions mingle with northern European and increasingly African habits, and somewhere a strange and wonderful shared life emerges. Pentecost suggests that God delights in this kind of rich tapestry.

There’s a story about a monastery in the mountains of Tibet. One day when the spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the cat that lived in the monastery started making a noise. This was so distracting that the teacher ordered the cat to be tied up during evening practice so they could meditate in peace. Years later when the teacher died, the practice of tying up the cat continued, and when that cat died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, people wrote scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat during meditation practice!

The story perhaps illustrates a truth about human communities. We easily fall into habits of doing something a certain way without even remembering why. Nations inherit grudges. Churches inherit divisions. Communities inherit invisible boundaries. Faith was never meant to be a museum of inherited habits or a catalogue of sacred routines.

And then Pentecost arrives like a rushing wind. The Spirit interrupts inherited ways of doing things. The Spirit pushes the disciples into the street. The Spirit tears holes in the fences we quietly build around ourselves.

That matters for the Church in Europe today, because there is a great temptation everywhere to retreat into smaller and smaller circles of familiarity. It’s easy to become protective of identity, language, nationality, tradition, or denomination. Yet here we are today, Anglicans and Lutherans together around one table, worshipping in a place where many of us are guests, travellers, or adopted residents.

There is something deeply Pentecostal about that; not because we’ve erased our differences, but because we’re discovering fellowship that is deeper than difference. And perhaps this is one of the gifts immigrants like us can offer the wider Church. People who live between cultures often recognise more quickly that our deepest identity is not finally national at all. St. Paul says that “our citizenship is in heaven.” That doesn’t mean we stop loving our homelands. It means we learn that every earthly homeland is provisional. Christians are always, in some sense, pilgrims.

The Church is meant to be one of the few places on earth where people can arrive carrying accents, histories, and vulnerabilities and still hear, “Welcome home.” At Pentecost, the disciples don’t hand out phrase books before speaking. They don’t require everyone to pass a cultural exam. The Spirit simply reaches people where they are.

That is also what happens at the Eucharist. At this table Christ gathers us before we have everything worked out. We come with different backgrounds and theological understanding, different first languages and life stories, different fears about the future and memories of the past. Yet we receive the same bread and wine. The same Christ meets us all.There is something quietly revolutionary about that. The world often sorts people into tribes, but the Eucharist creates a family.

And perhaps, on an island filled with people who have crossed borders of one kind or another, Pentecost invites us to ask not only how we ourselves are welcomed, but how we might become people of welcome for others.

Who around us is still standing on the crowded station platform unable to understand the noise? Who is longing to hear a voice of kindness, recognition, and grace cutting through the confusion? Who needs the Church not merely to preserve tradition, but to speak hope in a language they can hear?

Peter’s sermon on Pentecost begins with the words, “Let this be known.” The Holy Spirit is not poured out only on the confident, the settled, the local, the educated, or the religiously fluent. Pentecost is not a private religious experience tucked away behind closed doors. Peter, the frightened disciple who denied Jesus stands up in the middle of Jerusalem with a new confidence. And he urges us – do not keep this to yourselves. Let people know that God has not abandoned the world. Let people know that the barriers are not as solid as they appear. Let people know that the Holy Spirit still crosses borders with astonishing freedom. And let it be known, too, that in Christ there are no foreigners at the table.

Mtr Fiona Jack
Chaplain

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Please click this link to read previous sermons: https://allsaintstenerife.org/all-saints-midweek-letters/

IMPORTANT NOTICE/ AVISO IMPORTANTE/ WICHTIGER HINWIES

All enquiries regarding the Boot Sale should be made either by WhatsApp on 615 222 311 or by email on bootsale@allsaintstenerife.org
Thank you

Todas las consultas sobre la Boot Sale deben hacerse por WhatsApp al 615 222 311 o por correo electronico a bootsale@allsaintstenerife.org
Gracias

Alle Anfragen dezuglich der Boot Sale entweder per WhatsApp unter 615 222 311 oder per E-Mail an bootsale@allsaintstenerife.org gestelt werden
Danke

Dear Friends,

With the awful news of the volcanic eruption on La Palma, please can I ask for your prayers for all on the island and everyone who is being affected by this disaster. Many will know that our Chaplaincy has strong links with La Palma and that I take a service there once a month. Please remember Alan and the congregation, praying for their safety and for everyone on the Island.

With Blessings
Fr Ron Corne.

This year’s Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal raised €491.17. Due to the pandemic only 10 poppy tins were distributed which included 2 used by All Saints.

Many thanks to both campuses of the British School of Tenerife, Los Realejos and La Luz, who between them raised over 50% of the total. Breakdown as follows:
British School of Tenerife – Los Realejos campus €57.68
British School of Tenerife – La Luz campus. €198.49
All Saints Church raised €138.12

On top of the above monies will be added the proceeds of the collection from Remembrance Sunday, totaling €233.70, making a grand total of €724.87. Thanks to ALL who contributed!

Wendy Sanderson
Churchwarden

On 6th August, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, Fr Ron Corne was licensed as Chaplain of All Saints, North Tenerife.  The Celebrant and Preacher was the Venerable David Waller, Archdeacon of Gibraltar.

Click here to see a photo album of the occasion

Thanks to our Assistant Priest, the Revd Rachel Ganney, and Paul Ganney for their work in recording the service.  Also, thanks to all those who made the occasion so special with arrangements in the church, and for the lunch afterwards.

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THIS COMING SUNDAY, we will remember the 138 passengers and 8 crew members who lost their lives in the Dan Air 1008 accident from Manchester to Los Rodeos (TFN) on the afternoon of April 25, 1980. The plane fell about 20 kilometers from the Los Rodeos airport, crashed against the El Diablillo mountain in the municipality of El Rosario. At All Saints’ we have a rose garden to commemorate each victim. We will never forget the families of the victims and the 146 men, women and children who lost their lives on that tragic day.

The anniversary of the disaster is marked each year at the Sunday service nearest to the date as the congregation gather in the garden to remember those who died that day.  This would have been this coming Sunday, however our Chaplain will remember the victims in his reflections.  Fr Ron has written a reflection about the Rose Garden which you can read here.

As well as our memorial garden here at All Saints’, there is a memorial in the Southern Cemetery, Manchester commemorating the victims of the disaster, whose names are inscribed on a series of slate tablets within a small grassed enclosure.

ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH holds a number of social activities throughout the year. To keep up to date with all that’s going on at the church please bookmark this page and pay us a regular visit.

Each month between October and May, the church hosts a quiz for teams of six from the various British groups active in and around Puerto de la Cruz.

Among those taking part on a regular basis are: The Church, The English Library, the British Games Club, ESTA (the amateur dramatics group). and the Friends of Tenerife. Each of the competing teams takes a turns at compiling the questions.

The quizzes are open to everyone but only the regular teams are able to compete for the monthly trophy.

They start at 6pm, with the aim of finishing around 8.30pm.

Admission is €2 per head and a full bar service is available. Monies raised go to a charity chosen by the group who organised the quiz. Players generally take along their own food for the evening, to consume during the interval.

Quiz Dates for 2024/2025, with the organising group in brackets: