Newsletter 14 April 2023
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Click here to open the newsletter.
Government guidance is that books of condolence represent an infection risk so we are discouraged from having them. Instead there is a national national online book of condolence, prepared by the Church of England, which can be signed here.
In mid September, our administrator Clare Bell is moving on to pastures new. She’s been in the role for 12 months, been a real blessing to us, and we’ll miss her presence enormously.
But her departure creates an opportunity for someone, and it could be you!
If you’d like to know more, download an application form here.
Dear Friends,
I have some good news. At long last, we’re ready to reopen three of our eight churches for occasional private prayer! Some of you I know are very excited about this – so please get the word out!
Before I tell you the dates, let me say a big thank-you to Carol Hutchings, Helen Owens and John Martin, the three Church Wardens who have worked so hard to get the buildings ready to reopen. Credit must go to their cleaning teams too! Carol, Helen and John are acting as what the government call “venue managers” – the people responsible (on behalf of the church PCCs) for all aspects of Covid-19 safety within the buildings. I’m very grateful to them for this work, and I hope you will all help to make their lives easier by obeying the various Covid-19 safety guidelines in church, as well as volunteering to help with the cleaning if it is safe for you to do so.
So, starting from Tuesday 23rd June, you can visit one of our churches at the following times:
To help keep you safe, the buildings are being cleaned before and after each opening period, and the three-day gap between each building opening will act as an additional “safety buffer” in which the scientists tell us any virus particles that the cleaners have missed will die.
Notwithstanding that, please help us keep the buildings clean and safe by minimising the things you touch while in the building, using the provided hand gel, observing social distancing, and following all safety instructions in the building.
Please do not enter the building if you are experiencing any of the key Covid-19 symptoms:
It’s also possible that we may need to close one of the buildings occasionally for a funeral, or because we haven’t been able to maintain cleaning safety. We’ll do our best to inform you of this.
As yet we have no guidance on whether on when our buildings can reopen for regular worship. Whenever this is, it is extremely unlikely that services will return to the patterns we were experiencing before the Covid-19 outbreak. When the word comes to restart, we’ll need to go slowly and safely for a period of time, seating capacity will be significantly reduced in all our buildings, and we’ll be encouraging you to travel to each other’s services. We’ll let you know further details after the government let us have further details!
As we don’t anticipate everyone will want to (or be able to) return to church at once, we will also need to explore ways to keep some of our online services going for the forseeable future.
Briefly, a few other bits of news. And remember, please also scroll down through the rest of this email to see details of readings for this Sunday, links to some fun things we’ve spotted this week, and our updated prayer list.
Like all small charities, your local church is suffering a significant financial shortfall as a result of lost income from collections and special fundraising events we’d have run through the summer.
Whilst there’s still some hope we might be able to run a few events in the open air later in the summer, we do face a very challenging future financially. If you are in a position to give an additional gift at this time, it would make a huge difference.
To make this simpler, we’ve set up a new GIVING page on our website (https://www.hopechurchfamily.org/giving), with all the information you’ll need to give a one-off, or regular gift to any of our churches.
Every week I produce the services on DVD and CD for a small number of folk across the area who don’t have internet access. It’s been a lovely way for them to stay in touch. If you know of anyone else who would be helped by this ministry, please let me know. And can I say a big thank-you to Alison, John and Robina, who are helping with distribution in Ripple and Welland!
We can’t meet physically as church at the moment (but I hope those of you who can, have enjoyed some small social gatherings since the rules were eased last weekend) but Zoom continues to be a good tool to help us keep in touch and meet with a crowd of folk! If you’ve not tried it yet, and have a computer, do give it a go – it’s possible to leave the video off and just talk, or even just to listen in to others chatting.
Click the links on the list below to take you direct to the event at the appropriate time.
Sunday 21 June
Live at 9:30am
Prerecorded, (stream at your convenience)
Tuesday 23 June
Wednesday 24 June
Every Day except Sunday
Services for Sunday 27 June
We long for the day when we can all gather together again, but in the meantime, stay safe, stay prayerful, and God bless!
Rev’d Barry Unwin
It’s been hard to ignore Coronavirus in the media this week. I, therefore, wanted to write a brief update for you all with a few thoughts on how we approach the subject as churches. This is not meant to alarm you, and will instead I hope set out some sensible precautions we can all take to minimise any risk of infection in our communities.
I am basing what I say in part on NHS guidance given to my children at school today, which included this poster which has been produced by the NHS for educational settings, but which I think is relevant to our church communities . It helpfully answers two key questions for us.
Much of this advice translates directly to our church context, however, it is worth now asking the specific question:
First, there’s no reason to panic!
Public Health England said on 25 February,
Whilst in places of worship, there is no need to avoid other worshipers who are well or to change normal faith practices – this includes taking wine from the communal chalice.”
There has never been a medically proven case of disease transmission via the communion cup. The Anglican Church of Canada has published a paper on this subject stating,
no episode of disease attributable to the common cup has ever been reported. Thus for the average communicant, it would seem that the risk of drinking from the common cup is probably less than the risk of air-borne infection in using a common building.”
Therefore, the Church of England has issued the following guidance: (and my comments on each point are included in red)
I believe that if we all follow these sensible guidelines, the risk of infection will be minimised, and in a year or so, we’ll look back upon Coronivirus as we do on Swine Flu – a nasty bug we managed to avoid with good infection control!
Barry Unwin
28 Feb 2020
I recently circulated an email updating everyone about this Sunday’s benefice service at Hanley Swan. To read it, click here
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