To: Members of the benefice of 4 Sharnford Road
Sapcote, Sharnford and Wigston Parva Sapcote LE9 4JN
16 July 2020
Dear friends,
How are you? I hope you are all well.
Church is Changing, what’s happening?
About a month ago I sent you details of how our church buildings in Sapcote and Sharnford were opening for individual prayer. This was conditional on our implementation of controls to ensure that people are as safe as possible. It was wonderful to meet a number of you there! We have also kept people up to date with developments, via the re-introduction of our weekly news sheet (by email or post). In our news sheet we indicated that we would open these two buildings for worship on Sunday July 19th for Family Holy Communion, and the purpose of this letter is to give you more details. Also, I hope that this letter will help you to decide whether or not to join in with any of our forthcoming worship.
Please note that Messy Church isn’t able to meet physically at the moment, there is no plan for midweek Holy Communion because of cleaning restrictions and St. Mary’s Church, Wigston Parva remains closed due to very limited capacity. We have no weddings booked for 2020, no baptisms are being booked at the moment, but we do have provision to host funerals, on Wednesdays only, with limited numbers.
Our worship for the next few Sundays will look, sound and feel very different to what we experienced at the beginning of 2020! Both church buildings have facilities/signage to encourage good hygiene and social distancing. Order of service cards will be placed on your seats- you can take these home and bring them with you to worship next time, or leave them in a box on the way out. Worship will not include singing and will be shorter in duration.
For Holy Communion there will be no sharing of the peace, and there will be no wine. I will ensure that Church of England guidelines are followed, eg requiring you to stand to receive bread wafers whilst keeping your distance from myself and others. We are also required to keep a list of those who attend. Although this will seem strange at first, I hope and pray that we will meet with God and be encouraged in our Christian faith. Over the months, as restrictions allow, we will re-introduce missing elements of worship.
St.Helens Church changes.
We are going to trial a 10am start each Sunday to see if it can work for us. This will mean that I will leave very soon after our worship in order to lead worship at Sapcote at 11am.
We plan to hold worship at 10am each Sunday as follows :
Family Holy Communion at 10am on Sundays 19 July, 30 August
Family Worship at 10am on Sundays 2 August, 6 September. No refreshments afterwards.
Morning Worship at 10am on Sunday 16 August
Morning Prayer at 10am on Sundays 26 July, 9 August, 23 August
Morning Prayer will be a short service led by myself from the front. It will be followed by time for individual prayer for those who want to pray longer.
All Saints Church changes.
We plan to hold worship at 11am each Sunday as follows:
Family Holy Communion at 11am on Sundays 19 July, 2 & 30 August .
Morning Worship at 11am on Sundays 26 July, 9 & 16 & 23 August, 6 September.
The projector will not be used and any prayer ministry will take place, at a safe distance, after our worship has ended.
Worship with us at home?
All Saints Church has a wifi connection that may be good enough for us to livestream our 11am Sunday worship via Zoom. This means that anyone with a phone can listen in to our worship. To find out how to do this please talk to Dave Harrold on 07786985932 before Sunday. Also, if you are online and have Zoom, or can download Zoom, you can join our 11am worship online. The codes to join are the same as for our midweek meeting, namely meeting number 81762098875 and passcode(from Dave Harrold) . If you are on email you will find attachments to help follow our worship This Sunday I will also host a chat via Zoom after 11am worship starting at 12 noon and ending at 12.30pm using meeting number 6269841420 and password “Chat”.
Your response
Although risks of spreading Covid 19 in our buildings are being minimised, they can’t be removed altogether. Therefore, each of us must consider carefully our own situation, and decide whether or not to visit our church buildings- especially if we have underlying health conditions or are shielding others with such health conditions. The Church of England
website has a lot more detailed information. If anyone is in any doubt, please stay at home and continue to pray at home for the time being. Please could you respond to this letter to let me know whether or not you feel able to return to worship? If you can join us physically, or via Zoom, I will see you there and take that as a yes!
If not, it would be really helpful for me to know about your personal situation. So, please reply to me via email [email protected], write to me to the address at the top of this letter or phone me on 01455-272215. I would be really delighted to hear from you whatever your news.
My prayers are with us all as we continue on this ever-changing road to recovery.
With all God’s blessing during these challenging times.
Rev Mick