This Week

Dear all

I wrote last week that preparations were under way for the opening of some of our churches for private prayer. This is now in place in a number of our churches and the details are on the weekly sheet (attached). There will undoubtedly be changes to these details in the coming days as the situation and government advice/instructions change, so please do keep an eye on these announcements.

In the coming days we will also start conversations about returning to Sunday worship. We are expecting an announcement about this soon and will try to put things in to action as soon as possible, but please note that the situation will vary between churches as each tries to respond to the situation.

One realisation of the pandemic (and it was slow to come to me) is that our online provision should continue beyond the restrictions. We have folk who can not get to church and who we have served poorly in the past and we need to make sure that ‘business as usual’ is not resumed in this particular regard.

This week our online service will be - as usual - available from 8.30am on Sunday morning on the benefice website at this link - please pass this on to anyone you think might appreciate it. If you are in contact with people who are not online, please do pass on the numbers for the initiatives from the central Church of England and the Diocese of Oxford:

• 'Daily Hope' on 0800 804 8044.

• The Oxford Diocese line is reached via 01865 920930

Also included in this along with the Weekly Sheet we have a sermon from Douglas for the feast of St. Alban (on Monday) and a sheet with notes on the Saints' days of the week.

I am still hoping to broaden the input to our worship. If any of you can help and would be willing to record bits of a service - preferably video but audio would be fine - and then email them to me then I will do the editing. There is a lot to include each week, so if you can offer a reading or a prayer, please let me know (edownlandrector@gmail.com) - it will feel more like benefice worship if more are involved in leading parts of it as we haven had in our worship week in, week out.

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 (whilst keeping physically distant!)

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

John