St Mary’s & St Luke’s News & Church at Home Resources for 29 November 2020 – Advent Sunday
Our churches will reopen for communal worship on Sunday 6 December – see below for details.
Worship & Prayer for this Sunday and the coming week
Online
Every Sunday
10:40 am Live Streamed Worship
from St Mary’s
(stream begins at 10:30am)
Morning Prayer – Mon & Thursday
Online only on Zoom – bit.ly/930mp
Click below to view our channels
In Church
This Week
We are open for Individual Prayer on
Tuesday morning 10am – 12 noon
& Thursday afternoon 2pm – 3:30pm
Sunday 6 December 2020 – Advent 2
9am at St Luke’s
10:40am at St Mary’s
Booking required for both Services above: bit.ly/book4worship
Bookings can be made from Monday 30 November
Midweek Holy Communion will resume on 9 December – no booking required
Click for Church at Home Resources for All Ages
Keep in touch with the latest news from our churches and subscribe to our Newsletter
Click here to read Revd Mike’s latest Newsletter where you can subscribe and have it emailed directly to you each week.
https://mailchi.mp/a89bb32ccf5b/st-marys-st-lukes-newsletter-27-november-2020
An Update on Worship as we come out of Lockdown this week
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Wednesday 10 am Holy Communion Service will resume on Wednesday 9 December – no booking necessary for this, but bear in mind due to social distancing, there is a limit to how many we can fit in.
Morning Prayer: this will continue on Zoom for the foreseeable future and happens Mon-Thurs each week. However, due to annual leave, it will be on Monday & Thursday only this coming week. You can join us on Zoom here: bit.ly/930mp the service lasts for 20 mins.
Private Individual Prayer will continue this coming week and will finish after that for the time being. It will be on the usual days Tuesday 10 am – 12 noon and Thursday 2 pm (slightly later than normal) – 3:30 pm. Can I just take this opportunity to express our thanks to the small team of people who have facilitated this for us, opening, being there to help, cleaning after people and closing afterwards. Thank you very much.
Christmas Services
These will inevitably be different this year! We are waiting for the updated guidance from the Church of England to be published so as we can finalise the services. Without being able to sing carols, most of our Christmas services will not work in church and will be online this year. We will have an online Nine Lessons and Carols service and another online Carol service on one of the evenings leading up to Christmas, more details when we have them. Paul and Mike have looked into the possibility of holding an outdoor Carol Service in the Car Park of the Church Hall, but the restrictions on social distancing and singing are too great to make it a viable safe option.
Sadly, we won’t be able to hold our usual Crib & Nativity Service on Christmas Eve, however, we are planning to invite our Junior Church families to a special Crib Service just for them, this would be live-streamed as well for all of you to join in with from
the safety of your home. Junior Church has not been able to meet since March so it would be lovely to have something just for them.
We will be holding a Midnight Holy Communion service on Christmas Eve and a Communion Service at each church on Christmas Day. Again, a booking will be required and bookings for these services will open up on Monday 14 December using the same booking system as above.
Christmas Household Bubbles: as was announced this week by the Prime Minister between 23 & 27 December you can form an exclusive ‘Christmas bubble’ composed of people from no more than three households. During this period your Christmas Bubble can attend a place of worship together, however, to clarify, there still needs to be a 2m distance kept between each bubble, it is not a relaxing of social distancing between bubbles within church, this still needs to be maintained.
An extra fundraiser for the War Memorial Fund, please see below to on how to join in the raffle for a Horne’s Jams & Pickle Hamper or a Christmas Card activity set.
Chris and Mike Horne have been busy making jams, pickles etc
Further update on the Produce Sales……..
We have now raised a total of £515.00 towards the church funds which is a fantastic amount.
NOW ALSO available:
Individual Christmas puddings at £1.50 each
Family size Christmas puddings at £3.50 each
Once again, thanks to Chris and Mike for working so hard to meet the orders and for everyone who has contributed by purchasing items.
Not long until hyacinth delivery!
Click here to see what’s available.
Sue
Chris Horne, mobile: 07756 575835
Sue Squirrell, mobile: 07817 746288, e-mail: sue.squirrell@thedrey.co.uk
Click here to see what’s available and call Chris or Sue to order
Today!!! (Saturday 28/11)
Christmas Toy Appeal & Food Bank Appeal
As you may be aware on the first Sunday of December we usually collect new toys for the Salvation Army Christmas Toy Appeal. However, this year due to Covid the Salvation Army can’t accept toys this year and are asking for a cash donation instead. Our friends at Wells Green Methodist Church have arranged an afternoon to help us support the Salvation Army and the local Food Banks (especially with Christmas Treats).
They will be open on Saturday 28 November, 2 pm – 4 pm for you to drop off Food Bank items and cash donations for the Salvation Army Toy Appeal.
Please support it if you can.
In the build up to Christmas, we’d like to invite you to brighten up both your community and the internet! Simply make a bright star and display it in a window in your home. In addition to this, why not post a photo of your star on social media with #GuidingStar @maryandluke . Let’s be lights in our community and perhaps the stars may remind us of the stars in our communities we are thankful for this year.
Funerals
Funerals this past week:
None
Funerals still to take place
Richard Charles Pugh
Please keep their families in your prayers.
Here’s our monthly Foodbank data for October that you may wish to share with your congregations:-
Donations of food received weighed 3,739kg and we were able to help 190 people during the month
If you are able to donate, we are currently short of long-life cakes/puddings, chocolate and sweets, sugar, custard, and crisps.
We are open Monday to Friday between 9.30am and 3.30pm for donations at our rear entrance.
Thank you for your ongoing support.
Best Wishes, John Rivers
St. Paul’s Centre, Hightown, Crewe CW1 3BY Tel: 01270 586186 Email: pantry@stpaulscentre.org.uk
https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/StPauls
Website http://stpaulscentre.org.uk/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/stpaulscentre/
Church at Home Resources for all ages
Junior Church Resources
As we can’t meet together for Junior Church, each week we will publish something on here for our young people, and not so young people, to do at home.
We hope you find these resources useful.
- You can click here, or the image above, to access the resource from St Mary’s
- Also, each week The Ollertons have produced some great resources over the past few months
- The Church of England’s ‘Faith at Home’ website has resources for young and old
- The Bible Society’s Book Club is an amazing resource for older youth and their parents – it’s well worth a book to discover more about the Bible
A bitesize Bible experience from the Ollerton Family
Through 15 minute sessions explore famous characters and events that form The Greatest Story Ever and discover how we can be part of it today. Simple to run. Fun. Free. No prior knowledge required. This family devotional course mixes online content (videos, readings, discussion) and printed cards to form a colourful learning experience in your own home.
https://thegreateststoryever.orghttps://youtu.be/MO-LGA6pz1Y
Faith at Home from the Church of England
This is a great resource for families to keep their children’s faith alive at this time.
Faith at Home is a national campaign that builds on the work of Growing Faith and Everyday Faith to support the faith development and pastoral care of children and young people. Click Here to go to the Faith at Home website.
https://youtu.be/8XbRgVacVQA
The Bible Society
Bible Book Club
This is a fantastic free resource which we’ve used for some of the Midweek Get Togethers and is great for personal use to discover more about the books of the bible. Please take a look at the video and click here to find out more.
https://youtu.be/xZcnk-65JzI
Giving to our church Online or by Phone Banking
It’s simpler than you may think
Online One off giving
Giving via your bank
Easyfundraising
Giving Leaflet with further information on giving at St Luke’s & St Mary’s
Online One off giving
You can give via our very simple online giving partnership with Give a Little and Sum Up. Simply click the button below. Sum Up take a small transaction fee from what you give.
Giving via your bank
You can give via your bank via online banking or telephone banking. If you do it this way we receive 100% of the money you give, there is no transaction fee. Here are the details you need to make a payment directly into the church bank account. For phone banking you may need to take a look at a statement from your bank and it normally has the details of how to do this on the back. You can give once or set up a monthly payment. Please remember to never give passwords over the phone and only call the official number on your statement.
Account Name: St Mary’s Wistaston PCC
Sort Code: 08 92 99
Account No: 65067004
Ref: your initial & surname
Easyfundraising
A very simple way to give, if you shop online or do click and collect, is through Easyfundraising – it doesn’t cost you a penny as by using Easyfundraising a percentage of what you but gets given to the church.
In total we’ve raised over £1600 through Easyfundraising. For more information on this please click here.
Giving Leaflet with further information on giving at St Luke’s & St Mary’s
Click on the image to view/download the leaflet.
Did you know that you can print this Newsletter?
If you would like to print this Newsletter for yourself or perhaps someone who can’t access the internet then you can! To do this simply click the green Print & PDF button at the top right of every post and follow the instructions. Don’t forget if you are sharing paper with someone do it safely and hygienically.
