What should we do now?

It’s the question that so many people have been asking – and asking me – over the past week, especially about our church services at the moment. The local situation is not good, with Covid infection rates very high, and local health care and hospitals under a lot of pressure.

This is why we have taken the decision to stop Sunday Morning services at St John’s and St Mark’s for the moment. I’m very sad to have to do this as I know that many of us really benefit from them in many ways – however, just now, I think that there is too great a risk to our congregations, to our wider families and to our community in continuing with them. I very much hope that this will just be for a short time – I hope that soon the infection rate falls and we will be able to start these again.

(If anyone would like to see the reasoning behind this decision and find out more about how we will decide when to reopen these services, I’d be happy to send this to you.)

During this time, we will open St John’s for private prayer on both Sunday and Thursday mornings, and we will also keep Wednesday Worshippers going (for a very small congregation) at St Mark’s. As well, we have restarted our full programme of YouTube services, and our Zoom Tea and Coffee on Sunday mornings is going again. We have also added in a couple of ways to pray together on WhatsApp and Zoom. SEE OUR CALENDAR TAB

And at this time especially, let’s make a big effort to keep in touch with one another (phone, text, email, letter, postcard…). Let’s see how we can help, encourage, care for and pray for each other. Many are finding this time a worrying and lonely one – showing the love that Jesus taught us about will make a real difference to our church family and to our community around.

Thank you for all you are doing for each other. God Bless, Mark.