Come and take a selfie in the stable and use the #selfiestableOur Christmas 2020 campaign supports the work of Room at the Inn & Y Project charity no 1176629. It was launched after the closure of the old Warrington YMCA. They provide daytime services to homeless and vulnerable people and a 22-bed emergency accommodation unit in Museum Street. Their ethos is to help people to access the services they need to go forward with their lives.Please donate belowhttps://cafdonate.cafonline.org/15295#!/DonationDetails
I hope you have had a good week and are keeping well. Compared to Lent, Advent can seem to be a fairly low-key penitential season. The focus is more on hope and anticipation than perhaps the more sombre emphasis of self-examination that goes with Lent. Before we entered Advent this year there seemed to be little to look forward to. Church services would be very restricted. The opportunities for us to get together to celebrate the birth of Christ seemed to be very limited and nothing like we’ve been used to over the last few years. But necessity is, as they say, the mother of invention. Yesterday, we had a Christmas tree put up in the Car Park. We would like you to put a decoration or two on it as you’re passing.And today Paul Turner, Graham Lancaster and Mark Longstaff braved the weather and have started building the Manger in the Car Park (see photo). All it needs now is lights, a roof and straw bedding, and then you’ll be able to realise a lifetime ambition and create your own nativity scene. You don’t have to dress up. Just come as you are (but you can dress up if you want to). Don’t be shy! You’ll have a couple more days to get ready and your cameras/phones fully charged up!Tickets for Midnight Communion are going well, so if you want to come please go to our Eventbrite page:- https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/all-saints-church-daresbury-15013411336You can also now reserve seats for our Sunday morning Communion services. These will restart next week – 13th December. As before, we are limited to 30 places at present. As an experiment, we’ve extended the closing time for reservations to 9.30am on Sunday morning, to allow for any late minute changes of plan on the day itself.We’ve found out that some of emails from the Church’s email address (@daresburycofe.org.uk) are ending up in people’s junk folders. Please check yours from time to time. This does not affect emails such as this one as it comes out a different way. It is being looked into.This Sunday morning’s service is attached. Don’t forget there is also a service of Evening Prayer every Sunday afternoon at 4.00pm.Have a good week.With God’s blessing,David
Hi David,I hope you and your family have had a good week and are keeping safe after what has been a very hectic week on the news front. It looks like there will be a third vaccine available soon. A vaccination programme will be soon under way. We now know that we will all be in Tier 2 from next Wednesday. All we have to do is to try to work out how we can meet up with our families and friends! Good news too about Gill. Her 3 years a Curate has successfully come to an end and she now has a new job title – Associate Priest. Congratulations and prayers and thanks to Gill, and to Glynis!Other good news is that we can now proceed full steam ahead with our plans for reopening the Church in time for our Christmas services. We shall have our first Holy Communion service in Church on 13th December at 10.30am. Don’t forget to reserve your seat through Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/all-saints-church-daresbury-15013411336. We have a wedding on 5th December which means that we have to delay things by a week. But we are in the season of waiting! Advent starts tomorrow!Plans for Carols in the Car Park are well underway. The Choir have been practicing. We have a brass ensemble lined up and everyone will be socially distanced and Covid secure in their cars. Again, Eventbrite will have free tickets available although the PCC has agreed to ask for a suggested voluntary donation of £10 per car to help cover the costs etc. Details will shortly available. It will also be streamed through FaceBook Live, as with all our services.Looking a bit further forward we are having a virtual Christingle on Christmas Eve at 4.30pm and Midnight Communion at 11.30pm. There will be no service in Church on Christmas Day itself nor on 27th December. The first service in Church for the New Year will be on 3rd January at 10.30am.This year we’re going to have 2 Christmas Trees, one in the car park and one in the Church. The car park tree will be arriving on 4th December. Thanks to the Ring o’Bells who have kindly donated the lights. They are also kindly donating the oranges for the streamed Christingle so let’s give them our support when they reopen We will provide a few decorations because what we would really like is for everyone make/bring their own and put it on the tree. That way it will become a tree for the whole community.And then there’s the manger and stable! Thanks to Webbs of Runcorn, who have donated all the materials, we are going to build a stable in the car park so that you, young and old, can dress up as the Holy Family and have your picture taken as a reminder that the Christian story survives and continues despite all that has happened this year. We’ll provide the hay and straw; you provide the baby!Hope triumphs always and Advent, which starts tomorrow, is the season of hope. Thanks to Kathy and Billy Spann we will be able to light candles on the Advent Wreath tomorrow and for the next 3 weeks. So, the countdown begins. If you haven’t bought your Advent Calendar to the Church of England’s website https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/COFE_02977_AdventCalendar-ComfortandJoy_v4.pdf. You can also find a link there to light a virtual candle.In the meantime, you’ll find tomorrow’s service attached.With God’s blessing,David
Dear All, I hope you’ve had a good week and that you and your family are all well. First a correction to the date I gave out for the Carols in the Car Park service. It should have read 20th December not 18th December. Thanks to those who pointed it out to me! At present we are continuing to plan for the Christmas themed services and events I mentioned last week. I shall say more about them in the next few weeks. In the meantime, you might like to know about our services for the next two weeks. This Sunday marks the end of the Church’s year. The theme is Christ the King and the service is attached. Gill will be leading it from the Church. There will be a streamed Facebook Live service in the afternoon at 4.00pm led by Simon. Our weekday morning services at 10.00am on Facebook will continue as will the Friday afternoon 4.00pm reflection on the week just gone. This pattern will continue for the time being. Next Sunday (29<sup>th</sup> November) is Advent Sunday, the beginning of the new Church year. This means that for the next 12 months we shall be focusing on St. Mark’s Gospel outside the major festivals and the seasons of Advent, Epiphany, Lent and Easter. As we will still be in Lockdown 2, the Church will not be open, but we can stream from the Church. The service that day will be Morning Prayer and I will be leading it. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any questions. Its all very complicated! God continues to lead us in all that we do to further the mission of His Church. With God’s blessing, David
