Opening for prayer and beyond

Update for this week: Our Church opened for Prayer last Wednesday afternoon.

In the recent ASW survey you said that the two key top things that you missed were singing and being together, unfortunately we are still unable to do either of these in a meaningful, in personal way.
But with the risk assessment completed and appropriate measures in place we can now look forward and open the church building in a limited manner. We must remember that the Church has never been closed because the church is people. With that in mind, here are our provisional plans from now until September.

1. Opening for private prayer - Wednesdays 16:00 to 18:00hrs started from 15 July. This is supervised, with total numbers of people in the building being limited. If this proves to be helpful for people we will then consider opening at other times as volunteers allow. 

2. Live Streaming from Church - 'Church Live' is back in the church building and are refining our live streaming set up. It is good be able to run this with a wider team. We will not be opening this up as an act of public worship, but we do have some very limited capacity if you would like to come and be in the congregation. Please contact the church office if you would be interested in coming along.

3. August - pre-recorded Worship online - during August we will provide both Sanctuary and  'Church Live' as pre-recorded worship and teaching in a shorter format in order to give the teams that have been working so hard on providing Sanctuary and Church live a bit of a rest. This will include five amazing guest speakers and in Sanctuary we'll be looking back at some local heroes of the faith and what we can learn from them and looking forward to what god might have in store for the church after Covid. Don’t miss it.

4. Holiday Club Online - activities for children and families during August. Click here

5. New Wine - Breaks Out. 30 July - 03 August, worship, teaching and inspiration - a wonderful opportunity to participate in New Wine, even if you have never been before. Visit the New Wine Website

6. Summer Reading - a collated list of excellent books for you to read over the summer that have been reviewed and recommended by members of the Church family. See the article here

7. Homegroups in the church - if your homegroup wanted to meet in the church over the summer, this is now possible. Please contact the church office if you are interested and we will see if we can help make this happen. 

8. DVD Deliveries - Church Services will continue to be delivered to those who are elderly or vulnerable without internet access.

September and into the future. While only just over six weeks away, with all the recent changes, it makes it very difficult to make any concrete plans. However we anticipate having a mix of 'in person' and online worship for many months to come. We plan also to continue to live stream some services even if 'in person' worship returns in full. But we have to accept that gathering a larger church like All Saints while social distancing remains will not be possible. This means that being part of a Homegroup or other small group is increasingly important. 

Looking forward to when we can gather again, until then we will see you at 'yours' from behind a screen.

God bless,
Mark and Meg Searle