I hope you have all had a good week and that you and your family are keeping well. The Prime Minister spoke about the ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown on Monday. The full implications of how this affects Churches, and therefore us, is still to be assessed by the national church. Like many churches across the country, we decided to suspend public worship until there were changes in the ‘stay at home’ requirements. There have been some changes but the exact details of how they will allow us to move forward is still a little unclear. I hope that the national advice will help. I am very aware the Easter is 4 weeks away. The Worship Leaders have given it some brief thought and I know that the Choir are practicing special music for this great celebration. From Palm Sunday through to Easter Day there are some major services to plan. I suspect that we’ll end up with a mixture of special online only services and live streamed worship from the Church or the Church Car Park as we did for Christmas. Watch this space! Our first study session on climate justice on Wednesday night was very successful. There were some very interesting comments and suggestions as to how we as a Christian community should respond. How can we reduce our use of and reliance on plastic in Church? Should we use recycled paper towels and toilet paper? Can we look again at using fairly traded and environmentally friendly products. Have a look at this website - https://uk.whogivesacrap.org/collections/all - for example. You are very welcome to join us. Here are the joining details:- Zoom Meeting ID: 873 0988 5456; Passcode: 011017. You can also join on the phone on either of these numbers - 0203 051 2874 or 0203 481 5237 – you will need to enter the ID and passcode when prompted, so make a note of them before you call. If you’ve mislaid the study course booklet, it is attached. Thank you to those of you who have already contributed to our Lent appeal supporting the work of USPG, and in particular their education programme in South India. Working with the local churches, they want to provide an educational programme to help students address the environmental issues they face in their daily lives. The suggested donation is £10. We have set up a CAF Donate page along the same lines as we did during Christmas. Please go to this link https://cafdonate.cafonline.org/15983 and fill in your details etc. It should only take you a few minutes. Today we say goodbye to Jackie and Paul Watkins as they move to Cambridgeshire be nearer family and grandchildren in particular. They both made significant contributions to our Christian family - Churchwarden/PCC member, reading at services, helping with the Summer Fete to name but a few. We wish them God speed and every blessing in this next stage in their life. Tomorrow’s 10.30 service is also attached. It will be led by Gill. James is leading the afternoon service of Evensong at 4.00pm. We had some difficulty with the volume of the hymns during Friday afternoon’s service. We suspect it may be something to do with Facebook thinking that we do not have the correct licences to use the recordings – we do. We had a similar problem when we first began to stream services at the beginning of the first lockdown nearly a year ago. We’ll keep an eye on it but in the meantime if you can’t hear the music for the hymns or it seems very faint, please persevere and stay with us. With God’s blessing, David
I hope you have all had a good week. It’s certainly been a bit warmer than last week! Thanks to all those who supported the Ash Wednesday service. In the end we sent out 42 packs. My thanks also to Hugh (Wallace) for pointing out that I was wrong with the other tune that can be used to for the last two verses of the hymn ‘Forty Days and Forty Nights.’ The correct tune is Buckland, which is used to the hymn ‘Loving Shepherd of Thy Sheep.’ Go one – try it out and sing it to yourself, but not too often as it can become an ear worm! With the lockdown, we obviously cannot hold our weekly Lent lunch in aid of USPG, the Anglican international mission organisation I mentioned the other week. But we can at least continue to give them our support do. We are going to do this in two different ways. First, the Bible Study Group is going to look at their study course on climate justice. Anglicans across the world are charged to care for God’s creation. Our study will be looking at climate change and justice with input from churches in the Philippines, West Indies, Mozambique, South India and Japan. We should never forget that we in Daresbury are part of a worldwide communion of like-minded Christians who share a common history. This is a great opportunity to learn about their Christian life and perspective on this issue. In case you have lost the links to the Zoom meeting space we use, here they are: - Meeting ID: 873 0988 5456; Passcode: 011017. You can also join on the phone on either of these numbers - 0203 051 2874 or 0203 481 5237 – you will need to enter the ID and passcode when prompted, so make a note of them before you call. Secondly, USPG have asked us individually to give £10 to support their education programme in South India. Working with the local churches, they want to provide an educational programme to help students address the environmental issues they face in their daily lives. They suggest each of us give a donation of £10. So, we have set up a CAF Donate link along the same lines as we did during Christmas. Please go to this link https://cafdonate.cafonline.org/15983 and fill in your details etc. It should only take you a few minutes. By the way, our #selfiestable and Christingle campaigns raised £200.94 and £233.96 respectively. Thank you. Tomorrow’s 10.30 service is also attached. It will be led by Gavin. Simon is leading the afternoon service of Evensong at 4.00pm.With God's blessingDavid
We might not be able to have our Lent lunches this year, but we can at least continue to support USPG. This year they are asking us to support their 'For Such a Time As This' campaign. This will provide young people in schools in South India with the materials needed to understand how they can protect the environment. The suggested donation is £10 and you can make your donation through our dedicated CAF Donate page:- https://cafdonate.cafonline.org/15983 More details can be found here www.uspg.org.uk/forsuchatime
I hope you’ve had a good week and that you and your family are all well I had the first vaccination this week at the Halliwell Jones stadium. It was quite an amazing experience. The atmosphere was full of excitement and relief that we have turned a major corner in the management of the pandemic. Although the virus may never go away, at least we now have better ways of treating it, from vaccination to drug therapies to nursing care. It’s hard to believe that its nearly only a year ago since all this started. During that time we’ve learnt a lot of what we value about our Church, community and society at largely, as well as the nature of our own individual responses to the challenges. I was in a Zoom meeting of the Cathedral Council his week, and the Dean mentioned that we should all learn to practice and live in a culture of thanksgiving, to which I want to add the related values of grace and graciousness. These are virtues sadly lacking in our society and, at times, our Churches. Which is really all rather odd since the central act of worship of all Churches is the Eucharist (Holy Communion or whatever you want to call it) which means ‘thanksgiving.’ So, in this spirit of thanksgiving can I ask you in your private prayer time this week to give particular thanks for all Hospital Chaplains who are working tirelessly in the most difficult of circumstances. Please pray for John Duffield and all the Chaplaincy team at Warrington and Halton hospitals. The team is both non-denominational and multi-faith, no better an example of openness and inclusivity as you could possibly wish for. There have been many occasions when John and his colleagues have responded to my call to visit someone from the parish, when it has just not been possible for us to do so. Hospital visiting has to fit in with the hospital’s routines and what may be happening on the wards at a particular moment, which may not always be convenient. But with the Chaplains on site and always available, I know the spiritual, and emotional needs of a parishioner are being met. Thanks be to God for John and his colleagues; Amen. We’ve had a tremendous response to requests for the Ash Wednesday packs – over 40 in fact! Thank you! They have been posted out over the last two weeks, so I hope that all of you who did place an order have received yours. If not please let met know. We have a very few left, so if you’ve forgotten, or never got round to it but would like one, please telephone me by Tuesday – 01925 740348 or 07778 859935 – and we’ll see what we can do. Whether or not you have a pack doesn’t stop you from joining in with the Ash Wednesday service on 17 February at 7.30pm on the Church’s Facebook page by clicking here. I will be sending out the service sheet on Monday, or Tuesday at the latest so do look out for it. The Church of England has been investing heavily in digital resources over the last few years, and especially so at this present time when so many churches like ourselves are closed. They are very accessible. Please click here and have a look and sign up to what will help you on your Lenten pilgrimage. I shall be leading this Sunday morning’s service at 10.30am. The service sheet is attached. Gavin will be leading the afternoon service of said Evensong at 4.00pm. With God’s blessing, David
