Dear Friends,
May I assure you of my prayers and thoughts in these unprecedented times during which we have been instructed to close our church buildings and to hold no public worship for reasons of public health and safety.
If you wish to contact me or Canon Marvin you are very welcome to telephone or e-mail us. Details have been provided separately but if you would like our phone numbers or email addresses please request via the contact page.
I would like to update you on how we are working together as church communities during these days.
E-mail updates, devotional resources and prayer: As you can see we have finally organised ourselves to create electoral roll circulation lists which I hope will be both more comprehensive and more coherent going forward, and will prevent you receiving e-mails form me either multiple times or not at all! It is my intention that I will send an e-mail updates every Saturday along with a devotional reflection from the Ministry Team for the Sunday. During Holy Week I will send an e-mail every day with devotional reflections. I may send updates and resources at other times as things change and develop.
Updates on the current crisis and resources are available from the Church of England website (www.churchofengland.org) and the Diocese of Winchester website (www.winchester.anglican.org).
Facebook page: We have set up a Benefice Facebook page. I do realise that not everyone uses Facebook! It is however a useful tool to keep in touch and I will be posting regularly on the page and even will experiment with short video messages etc.
So firstly, if you are a Facebook user then I encourage you to have a look and like or follow ‘North West Hampshire Benefice’ or search for www.facebook.com/nwhbchurches/.
Secondly, if you don’t use Facebook, why not have a go? If you are not sure what to do, we have folk who would be happy to talk you through how to set up your own page. Let me know if you would like help with this.
Keeping in touch with each other: We are working on setting up ‘keep in touch’ networking within our church families and will be in touch further about this. This is proving more complicated than I at first thought and as things have changed so quickly, I have fallen behind with it. More on this in due course.
Community support co-operation: East Woodhay and Highclere Neighbourcare have spearheaded our communities’ response to offering support for people in our parishes. This has become a terrific overlap of folk from our communities, churches, societies and parish councils and is working in close partnership with our local surgery. I and many from our churches have become involved. I encourage anyone who would like to volunteer to help others during these days, or indeed those of you who find you need help, to use this scheme. You can register to volunteer or ask for help online at www.ewhneighbourcare.org.uk. Leaflets are being distributed to all homes in our parishes giving information and phone numbers to call for help. You can also sign up via their website for a regular update newsletter.
So what is the Rector doing, is it extra holiday?
I am not on holiday! I and Marvin are keeping daily prayers in our own homes and although we can now only celebrate Holy Communion at home we will both keep a tradition of this on Sundays. We would both be glad to receive any prayer requests.
I am becoming proficient with using various video conferencing tools. School governing bodies are all meeting in this way, as is the Neighbourcare community collaboration, I have also met virtually with clergy colleagues in the Deanery. Locally I am working with the youth confirmation team to move our confirmation preparation course online – using a combination of home packs (which can be e-mailed) with video conferencing – so I hope the six young people who have begun confirmation preparation will be able to continue. When the Confirmation service can take place – well that is another matter!! I am working on developing the Benefice Facebook page as a way to reach out to share news and worship. I am keeping in touch with a number of folk by telephone and will be doing more of this as the ‘keep in touch’ networking takes better shape. I and the Ministry Team are working on devotional resources to circulate for Sundays, Holy Week and Easter – and we are also hoping to experiment with video conferencing!
Funerals : clergy at this time are able to conduct funerals at the graveside with immediate family only or at the crematorium according to the crematorium’s rules. I have two funerals in the diary on this basis, neither of which are related to COVID-19.
So I hope this has been of help to you to know more of what is happening in our parishes.
Please do join in prayer during these days. I will send a second e-mail to supplement this with our Sunday devotional reflection and prayer resources.
With every blessing to you all,
Christine