This Week

Dear all

Welcome to worship today as we move through the Trinity season, or ‘ordinary time’ – in anything but ordinary time! After Trinity Sunday the focus of the church’s readings and liturgy turns from Christ and his deeds on Earth to our response - how we can live out our calling to be followers of Jesus, his disciples. This year in particular is a challenging time to listen to what God is saying to us through his Holy Spirit – how we enjoy our membership of God's family together, to rediscover what it is to belong to God's Church and how that works out in our daily lives. As we begin to re-open churches for public worship, what of the last few months do we need to keep and – more importantly perhaps – what from the past do we need to let go?

This Sunday our main service of Holy Communion will once again be recorded, this week at St Bartholomew’s, Oare. The video will be available from 8.30am on Sunday, streaming from that time and then available at any time later for you to use in your devotions. Services of Prayer During the Day and Compline for Ordinary Time for each day of the week are also available. The videos for all these services can be found on the benefice website, YouTube, and Facebook. As always, subtitles will be available.

We will once again be holding a service of Holy Communion in St. Andrew’s, Boxford at 9.30am on Sunday. We will also have a service of Evening Prayer in St. Barnabas’, Peasemore at 6pm. We will be operating under fairly tight conditions and in order to help with planning and logistics for these services it would be useful if you could please let me know by email or phone if you are intending to join us.

With the addition of Beedon from Wednesday of this coming week, we now have six churches in the benefice open for private prayer. The details are:
Beedon - Sundays (10am-12pm) and Weds (4pm-6pm)
Boxford - Sundays 10am (following the Eucharist)-4pm
Chieveley - Sundays (10am-12pm) and Weds (4pm-6pm)
Farnborough - Sunday (11am-4pm) and subsequently by arrangement with the wardens
Peasemore - Open every day as previously.
West Ilsley - Sundays (9.30am to 6pm)
We are not yet able to offer general opening for Oare, Stockcross or Winterbourne, but please contact the Rector for details if you would like access to any of the churches in the benefice outside the above hours to discuss availability.

Also included in this along with the Weekly Sheet (this week in 2 formats) we have a sermon from Douglas for the Feast of St. Bonaventure and a sheet with notes on the Saints' days of the week. There is also another edition of a free sheet from the Church Times and a poster for this week's Filling Station.

Please do still encourage others to keep in touch with what is going on by signing up to these updates just cut and paste the link to them in an email:
https://mailchi.mp/d58d3b280189/east-downland-sign-up

Very importantly, if there are any people who you know would like a hard copy of this then please print it off for them or let me know, and I’ll take care of it.

For now, as always, all the best, God bless, and keep safe

John