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, coming from St James', Winterbourne. 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.

This week we will be holding one service, Holy Communion in Boxford at 11.00am. 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 if you are intending to join us. Please also note the new requirements to wear face coverings in church.

In the weeks to come we have the following services:
20/09 - 9.30am - Outdoor Harvest Service at Chieveley
20/09 - 6pm - Evening Prayer at Peasemore
27/09 - 11am - Eucharist at Boxford
27/09 - 11am - Harvest Service in the churchyard at West Ilsley
Watch this space for further announcements about services.

We now have five churches in the benefice open for private prayer. The details are:
Beedon - Sundays (10am-12pm), Wednesdays (2pm- 4pm)
Boxford - Sundays 10am-4pm
Chieveley - Wednesdays (11am-12pm)
Peasemore - Open every day as previously
West Ilsley - Sundays (9.30am-6pm)
We are not yet able to offer general opening for Oare, Stockcross or Winterbourne and we have had to close Farnborough church for the time being while some necessary building work is carried out.

Also included in this along with the Weekly Sheet we have a sermon from Douglas for Trinity 14 - Vexilla Regis and a sheet with notes on the Saints' days of the week. There is also a copy of the Diocesan course book for the coming term. There are some excellent courses on offer so please do have a look.

Finally, the current issues of the Benefice Magazine and the Diocesan Magazine are available here.

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