Vicars letter

March 2021

Click for the Vicars letter from February 2021

Update on your church

St George’s Church remains open for individual private prayer seven days a week. That’s the good news. The effect of coronavirus, though, has still not diminished to the levels where we feel able to reopen the church for live, in-house, public worship. The churchwardens of both parishes and I have concluded that we will continue with the suspension of public worship for March. There will be a service available every Sunday on YouTube throughout the month, for which the average online attendance for the last four weeks has been 115 viewings. See the church website for the link. If things improve dramatically before then we will, of course, review this decision.

March takes in pretty much all of Lent, but there is a Lent Course available online, every Tuesday evening, on the Zoom platform. If you’d like to join in any of these reflections, then please follow the link on the church website.

The end of the month takes us into Holy Week: Palm Sunday is on 28 March. There will be services every day through Holy Week - they will just be different to previous years, as so many things have been this last year. On the evenings of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday - Easter Eve we will stream a live service on Zoom at 7.30pm. On Maundy Thursday there will be a recorded Communion service online at 7.30pm. On Good Friday there will be a recorded service online at 10am. As above, the details and links will be on the church website.

On Easter Sunday, 4 April, we hope to have the joy of reopening the church doors for live public worship. This will be such a joy and seems a very appropriate service on which to return to our churches, but it will have to be reviewed closer to the time.

When we return to public worship, we will not immediately reintroduce the pre-Covid service pattern. We will run with the alternating benefice service pattern for at least the month of April, i.e. an 8am service in one parish, and a 10am service in the other; then the following Sunday the service time/venue will be swapped. Specific dates, times, and locations will be given in the April issue.

In the meantime, it is spring. The snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils have been shivering under a covering of snow, and it has been very, very cold, but the days are getting noticeably longer, more and more people are getting vaccinated and there is hope of a brighter future. As Captain Tom said: “Tomorrow will be a good day.” Let’s look forward with hope and expectation.

Keep well. Keep safe. Keep praying. God bless.

Revd David Commander, Rector

T: 01580 240658 E: david@dc-uk.co.uk