Weekly News

Dear all

This Sunday our main service of Holy Communion will once again be recorded, coming from St Mary's, Chieveley. 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.

For those who are missing Evensong can I recommend the services being broadcast on Radio 3? Each Wednesday at 3.30pm and repeated on the following Sunday at 3.00pm (with occasional variations in timing) are some excellent sung services to listen and join with. They are also available on the BBC ’Sounds’ App/website following the Wednesday broadcast.

Opening the churches This week we will be holding six services:
20/12 - 11.00am - Holy Communion, Farnborough
20/12 - 11.00am - Carols (outside), Beedon
20/12 - 4.30pm - Carols (outside), Boxford
20/12 - 4.30pm - Carols at the Green (outside), Winterbourne
20/12 - 6.00pm - Carols (outside), Chieveley
20/12 - 6.00pm - Evening Prayer, Peasemore

If you are coming to a service taking place indoors in one of the churches, please be aware that we will be operating under fairly tight conditions and in order to help with planning and logistics you will need to book a place - let me know by email or phone if you are intending to join us. If we run out of (socially distanced) room we will have to turn people away and no, the irony of ‘no room’ at Christmas is not lost on me and we will do all we can to make sure all who want to come to worship are able to do so. Please also note the requirement to wear face coverings in church.

In the days to come we have the following services:
Thursday - Christmas Eve

4.30pm - First Eucharist of Christmas, Beedon

4.30pm - First Eucharist of Christmas, Winterbourne

4.30pm - Family Service (outside), Peasemore

6.00pm - First Eucharist of Christmas, Farnborough

11.00pm - Midnight Mass, Chieveley

Friday - Christmas Day

8.30am - Holy Communion, Oare

9.30am - Family Communion, Boxford

9.30am - Family Communion, West Ilsley

11.00am - Family Communion, Stockcross

11.00am - Family Service (outside), Chieveley

Sunday 27th December

11.00am - United Benefice Communion, Chieveley

Watch this space for further announcements about services and Christmas services can also be found here

Please note the Praying for the Nation page with Preparation for Christmas, which you can find here where there is a new reflection with accompanying music.

We now have six 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)
Farnborough – by arrangement with the churchwardens
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, 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 we have a sermon from Douglas for Advent 4 - 2020 and a sheet with notes on the Saints' days of the week. Also there is 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