Welcome to
Haywards Heath United Reformed Church
Haywards Heath United Reformed Church is a warm and welcoming church in the heart of town.
Part of the Mid Sussex Joint Pastorate, we meet for worship on Sundays at 10.45am.
Upcoming Events
12
July
Sunday Morning Worship at Haywards Heath URC
10,45am
Rev S Franklin
19
July
Sunday Morning Worship at Haywards Heath URC
10.45am
Mr S Dew
26
July
Sunday Morning Worship at Haywards Heath URC
10.45am
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Thought for the Month -
July 2026
by
Rev Michael Powell
WHY CALL A HYMN TUNE ‘MICHAEL’?
While watching a live-streamed service from Cambridge recently I noticed that one of the hymn tunes was entitled ‘Michael’. Naturally I was curious as to why!
The hymn was ‘All my hope on God is founded’ or in its 17th century German form, "Meine Hoffnung stehet feste". It seems that Robert Bridges from Kent (1844-1930) loved the words but was looking for a fresh tune to go with them. He wrote to a composer friend Herbert Howells asking if he could help.
Howells responded within a day or two with this new tune named ‘Michael’. Why Michael? It seems that Howells had lost his 9-year-old son, Michael, from polio. Perhaps he needed to sustain his hope, remember his boy, help his friend Robert, and enrich the future with a new tune.
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To me, one of the most poignant lines of the hymn says
‘Me through change and chance God guideth, only good and only true’.
Often our lives, individual or collective, seem like massive tangles of changes and chances, some wonderful, some, like the loss of a child, awful beyond words. But God, whose nature is goodness and truth, will delight with us in good times and guide us, or perhaps sometimes help us guide one another, through bad times.