Dear Friends,

This weekend’s service is a little longer than some because I have tried to reflect on the significance of this weekend as an anniversary of VJ day, the anniversary of the Flood and St Mary’s matronal festival.

Next week this email will continue, but there will also be the opportunity to return to church for the celebration for the Eucharist at St Mary’s Lynton at 11am. I am grateful to the working group who met last week to finalise what we needed to do in preparations and you can be assured that it has all been very carefully thought through – and there are a group of people who will be willing to help with anything which feels new.

I will attach the first of two guide sheets to help you know what to expect and decide whether you are ready to come to worship in church. As part of the guidelines from the Church of England I am asked to remind anyone who is vulnerable to think very carefully about how wise it is to come into a larger group of people. If you need to talk this through with me, please get in touch. We have decided to make 40 the capacity for the service – which is a cautious use of a building like St Mary’s. I am not expecting us to get close to capacity, but if you could let me know if you are planning to come, my knowledge of this would be helpful to those who are not sure how they feel at the moment.

The instructions sheet that comes with this email is deliberately practical, so that I can send another over the next couple of days which helps us reflect on how we can prepare spiritually before coming to the service, and use features of the current service to support our experience of God’s presence in a distinctive way.

God bless,

Samantha