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Archives for July 2020

Summer 2020

July 31, 2020 by St. Peter's

Dear Friends

I hope that you are all keeping safe as we move into a new month, a time that has always been for holidays and breaks from some of the normal routines. Maybe you are hoping to have a break this month, maybe you are not able to get away this month or perhaps this is the furthest thing from your mind in these times.

I don’t think we will know what “normal” will look like for some time. For us as a church in Yaxley, we are working out what we are able to do in this season. We know that there are many things that we cannot do in terms of our services, singing or being together. However, St. Peter’s Church is now open on a Thursday evening for people to come in for their own private prayer between 7pm and 9pm. We have social distancing and hygiene measures in place. Anyone is welcome to come and use the church building on a Thursday evening for prayer.

At this time, our services continue to be online on our St. Peter’s, Yaxley YouTube Channel and we continue to plan as to how and when we can open the church building for worship.

Every summer St. Peter’s runs a Holiday Club. We are sadly unable to run this in 2020 in person due to Covid 19, but we are organising some activities for you to do at home or around the village and we are hoping that you will be an Explorer during the summer holiday as we look at creation. Activity packs will be available to collect from the church porch from Monday 27th July and these will have craft material and other items for different activities that will take place throughout July and August.

Each week there will be new challenges for you to undertake as you explore your home, garden and our village of Yaxley and perhaps you will find out more about our creation story in the Bible. We will put out the activities every week on our Facebook Pages – St. Peter’s, Yaxley and the Community of St. Peter’s Facebook Group so have a look every week and see some different challenges.

Please share the results of your challenges with us on Facebook or email photos to me at yaxleyvicar@gmail.com.
You don’t have to be a child to take part – all ages very welcome 😊

In this month, I pray that you are able to get some rest and relaxation after a strange few months, and we look forward to sharing our explorations with you this summer.

With every blessing, Rev Sarah (Vicar of St. Peter’s, Yaxley)

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: 2020, Club, Coronavirus, COVID, Creation, Explorers, Holidays, prayer, safe, Summer

Why aren’t we going back into the church building yet?

July 22, 2020 by St. Peter's

Dear Church Family,

Following our PCC on the 13th July 2020 and our announcement that at present we will not be opening the church building for public worship, people have had questions and queries as to the decision taken in the unanimous vote not to reopen the church for public worship at this time. The decision was not taken lightly and much discussion was had. We all long to be back in church and worshipping together and the PCC and I are very aware of the biblical precedents given about meeting together and what this means to people. However, at this time the safety of God’s children is also paramount in our discussions and considerations.

I have tried to answer some of the questions that you may have at this time:

Background:
On the 4th July the Government allowed church buildings to reopen for worship. The Church of England and The Diocese of Ely have devolved the decision whether to open the building to each church as every church and every situation are different. We know that across our own local area, churches are doing very different things, some deciding to restart meeting together and some continuing with online worship at this time as they face many of the same challenges that we have.

Worship:
A survey was carried out by our Church Wardens which determined that we can get 36 people into our building at 2 meter spacing. This would include 2 large bubbles of families (meaning we may only be able to get 28 people in if not in larger groups.) Our normal Sunday congregation across our services is between 120-140 people.
Our pews and the configuration of our pews make it very difficult to use the space in the church effectively. Using all the pew seating area that we have, the number we can seat safely is 36 (or 28.)

Multiple Services:
To enable the opportunity for our church family to attend worship, we would need to hold 3-4 services a week. After every service the church would need to be thoroughly cleaned with every pew and every surface cleaned before another
service/event could take place in the church. If we did this on one Sunday we could have over 100+ people through the door, any one of which may be a carrier of Covid 19. We would need cleaning teams every week for after every service.

Service:
Any service we could hold would need to be limited in number and would need to be ticketed in some way and we have the circumstance where we may have to stop people at the door from coming in. Our accessibility policy states “St Peter’s Church is open to all. We welcome everyone to our church buildings.” We would not be able to do this if we opened in the current circumstances.

We would also need to ask every person that attends to provide their contact details for the circumstance that we have an identified case of COVID-19 and we need to go through the track and trace procedure. We are currently doing this for Private Prayer and is all done in line with GDPR regulations.

Children in church:
We love welcoming our children and young people to worship and it is wonderful to provide age related groups for our children and young people. When we return to public worship we know that the space that our children and young people have been using will not be big enough to safely house them and their leaders and therefore at this time we would not be able to offer groups for our children and young people.

We would also have to close off our creche due to the number of soft furnishings in there that cannot be cleaned sufficiently. We recognise this would make attending worship much more difficult for our families. Children would have to stay in their pew if they attended.

Private Prayer:
The church has been open for 3 weeks now for private prayer on a Thursday evening from 7pm to 9pm. We can only open for this time as a limited number of people came forward to sit in the church to welcome and guide people. We can only open the church when we have 2 volunteers to ensure the safety of those volunteering. To hold a session of Private Prayer outside this time would involve more cleaning. Please note we do not have a cleaner contracted to this kind of work.

Foodbank:
We are very blessed to have a Foodbank running out of our church and blessing our community and surrounding communities. The Foodbank has been able to run throughout the pandemic as we have 72 hours between each Foodbank session. 72 hours is the recommended amount of time to leave a building between any other “event.” A weekly service will mean the need to clean both before and after this as we would not have the 72 hour window any more.

Worshipping outside:
The Church of England guidance states “You can meet outside providing the churchyard or land around your church is owned or managed by you (for example by the PCC.)” We do not own the land around the church and to hold any gatherings/services, then means that we are following the Government guidance which states no more than 6 people should meet together (correct on 20/7/2020.)

Face Coverings:
The Church of England have yet to provide any guidance on face coverings other than for the person leading a service. If we could wear face coverings and potentially bring the social distance down to 1 meter + we could potentially seat around 50 people in the church. Being inside, reducing to 1 meter and increasing the number of people in the building obviously increases the risk of COVID-19 transmission.

Occasional Offices:
Weddings – We will be holding small weddings this year for 2 or 3 families with adequate cleaning, staffing and with a seating plan as to where people will be able to sit. No singing and maximum limit of 30 people including “church staff.”

Funerals – We are taking any funerals that wish to come into church on a case by case basis. The majority of funerals will continue to take place at Graveside or in the Crematorium with the offer of a memorial service at a later date.

Baptisms – All baptisms have been postponed until at least the autumn and families informed.

Online Worship:
We are fortunate to have been able to quickly move to online worship and we plan for this to continue in some way when we are able to return to worship in the church building. At present, our services continue through Facebook and YouTube. We do have some new plans for September which we are working out at this time.

We had always planned to take a breath, have a pause in August to take stock of where we are at this time, where we have come from and where are we going to. To explore more deeply – what is God saying to us in our individual lives as well as for us as a community. We would not have restarted public worship in August as there are not sufficient people to ensure that this is done safely. Our online worship and weekly service sheet will continue each week, but we hope to move at a slower pace during this month and for Laura and I to take some time off as well.

I understand that some of you will feel that I am being a stickler for the rules and regulations and I would agree with you that yes I am. I am doing this for three reasons, one being this is the decision of the PCC, the group of people that with the Church Wardens and I, hold a legal responsibility as well as our service to the church family and to God. The second being that we will not be covered by our insurance if we are not following the guidelines that have been laid out for us. The third and most important one to me is that you are God’s precious children and I have been given the role of leadership and care of God’s precious children here. If we were to have a case in our church or worse still an outbreak, I would want to know that I had done everything to prevent this from happening.

A few weeks ago I was contacted to say that I had been in contact with someone who was having a coronavirus test as they were showing symptoms. Thankfully that test came back negative, but I calculated in the time since I had been in contact with that person, that I had met with around 50 other people through funeral ministry and pastoral ministry and I could have carried this to each and every one of these people. There are times to circumnavigate rules, this is not that time.

The PCC meet again on the 14th September where we will again consider how we can move forward at that time with the guidelines as they stand at that point. The PCC are your elected representatives so please do talk to them and share your views with them, our Church Wardens and myself. Please pray for us as we try to find the right way forward at this point and in the coming days and weeks. Please pray that we will follow God’s guidance.

If you have other questions or queries, please do be in touch.

Rev Sarah

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Church, Online, PCC, prayer, services, Why

Private Prayer

July 9, 2020 by St. Peter's

We are opening the church building for Private Prayer on Thursday evenings, 7-9pm.

We kindly ask that if you are attending the church, please follow social distancing and the guidelines given to you by our hosts.

If you aren’t able to attend the church for private prayer, you can still pray at home – God will meet with you wherever you are.

At present we are not opening for Sunday Services.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: prayer, Private Prayer

Yaxley in Lockdown

July 1, 2020 by St. Peter's

As I write this, it will be 12 weeks since the church in Yaxley (and across the country and the world in some places) left the building. 

Many if not all of us will have had to come to terms with some very different circumstances in which to operate in both our family, school and work settings and within the community.  St. Peter’s, Yaxley were able to move very quickly on to the internet for our services and while it is not the same, we are worshipping together through weekly services on our YouTube Channel.  We also have children’s work videos on here and a virtual Messy Church – please do come and have a look and see what is on there.  We are also really aware that some people do not have access to social media for many reasons and we are sending out a weekly service sheet to these people to ensure that they still feel part of our church community.  If you would like to receive this, then please do give me a ring and I will happily add you to the list.

It has been wonderful to see how our community of Yaxley has come together in so many different ways to support each other through the Yaxley and Farcet Coronavirus support network, to seeing neighbours caring for each other, to the good humour that people have had at some of the weird circumstances we have found ourselves living within.  Thank you to all those who have continued to work during this time in many different places in our community and beyond to keep us safe and ensure that we have the things that we need. I would also like to say thank you for everyone that has contributed to making this community what it is including the lovely posters and bears that I have seen as I have walked around the village – what a great place to be in a difficult time.

Thank you also to the many people who have continued to keep our Foodbank stocked up over these last few weeks.  You will not be surprised to know that demand is increasing, and we expect this to continue.  We know that some of the usual places to donate are not operational at the moment so feel free to leave any donations on the Vicarage doorstep and we promise not to eat it and to get it to Foodbank asap!

You, like us, might be asking some really big questions about what is going on in our world at this time.  We know that people are seeking and asking questions and if we can help at all, then please do get in touch or have a look at some of the things on our YouTube Channel.  What I do believe very much is, that in the middle of this awful virus, good is happening and God is at work in our world.  Do join in our services on YouTube as we think about some of these big questions together. 

Jesus said “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” John 14:1

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” John 20: 19

With every blessing in this coming month.

Rev Sarah Hare

01733 248690 / 07498 230858

yaxleyvicar@gmail.com

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: foodbank, Lockdown, Online Church, St. Peter's, Yaxley, YouTube

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