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Christmas is NOT cancelled!

November 26, 2020 by St. Peter's

Dear Friends

You will have heard or seen the news headlines at some point this year saying “Christmas is cancelled” I can assure you it is not! Christmas took place over 2000 years ago in a stable in Bethlehem when God came to earth in the form of Jesus. This has been the strangest year ever for all of us in different ways and our celebration of Christmas may also be strange and probably different. However, the message of the angels was one of peace and joy:

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.” Luke Chapter 2.

Matthew’s Gospel Chapter 1 tells us this:
“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, “God is with us.”

Jesus, Emmanuel is God with us on earth. In all that may be strange and different this year, God came and walked on earth with us. In this season that may be different, in this time when we could be fearful, we can remember that Christmas cannot be cancelled and God walking the earth changed everything for all time.

May you know the blessings of Emmanuel in this Christmas season.

Rev Sarah.


Happy Christmas from St. Peter’s Church, Yaxley. Please do join us throughout December with our Explorers activities and in our services, which will be online on St. Peter’s, Yaxley YouTube Page. There will be a service in person on Christmas Eve for our Midnight service (starting 11.30pm) and Christmas morning at 10.00am IF Coronavirus restriction allow. We will need people to book in for services in church so please do contact the Parish Office on 07939 449255 or by email. Do follow our Facebook pages – St. Peter’s Church, Yaxley and/or Community of St. Peter’s Church, Yaxley for more information.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Celebrations, Christmas, Explorers, God With Us, Merry Christmas, Not Cancelled, services

A Changing World

November 4, 2020 by St. Peter's

Dear Friends,

I am writing this from The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, a tidal Island off the North East Coast of England. It is cut off from the mainland twice a day when the North Sea covers the causeway. It is a place that I love to come to with so much nature and beauty but there is also such a rhythm to this place as everything is dependent on the tides.

I am writing this at the start of October and so it is difficult to know what the rules and regulations will be by November. I am in a part of the world that has been quite badly hit by Coronavirus, the island that I love looks a little bit different at the moment, but the rhythms of the tides don’t change. The island is known as being a particularly important place for early Christianity after Irish monks settled here in the 7th Century and took the Christian Gospel from here to many places around the country. I love sitting and looking out to a small Island known as St Cuthbert’s Island and if you get the tides right you can walk out to it but you have to be careful not to get stuck as the tide comes in (which nearly happened on one occasion!) In all that has gone on in this year, sitting and watching the tides and the sunsets, reminds me of the constants that we do have in this world that some things will never change and the Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever – Hebrews 13:8. With all that is going on in the world, it can be hard to remember this. But God is unchanging even through the rocky road that 2020 has been.

God is unchanging, but we have had a few changes in the life of our church:
We re-opened St. Peter’s Church building for worship on the 4th October and plan to hold a 9.30am Service of Holy Communion in person every Sunday. You will however need to book in as such, as we can only get a certain amount of people in the building safely. If you would like to attend a service, please email me or call 01733 248690/07498 230858 or contact Laura by email or on 07939 449255. Our 11am service continues online on our St. Peter’s Church, Yaxley, YouTube Channel.

As the nights become darker earlier, we have stopped our open church on a Thursday evening for private prayer. We have also decided to postpone Alpha until 2021, but will let you know dates.

As we live in a changing world with an unchanging God, may you know His comfort, peace and presence with you in this month.

With every blessing Rev Sarah

Update 02.11.2020: Due to a second lockdown, the church building will be closed for services, from Thursday 5th November, until further notice.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Changing, Constant, Coronavirus, Holy Island, Lindisfarne, Rhythms, services, Unchanging

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

Helpful Resources during the COVID-19 Pandemic

March 30, 2020 by St. Peter's

We’re aware that there may be lots of resources coming your way and sometimes you may want to just file them away for later. Hopefully this page will help!

If we come across anything that may be of help, we will post a link in here. This is a working document and will continue to grow. You can help grow this document too; if you see anything that you think may be useful to others, please send us the link.

Here is the latest Government & NHS advice on Coronavirus.

Click here for the Cambridgeshire County Council & Peterborough City Councils Community Support

Please see our COVID-19 page for all that we are doing as a church during this time.

St. Peter’s Church Platforms of Communication
Church Office (Laura): 07939 449255 / email
Rev Sarah: 07498 230858 / 01733 248690 / email

Sign up to the weekly e-newsletter on our home page – we will keep you updated with online service details and church news

Our Facebook Community Group – Our virtual community, a place we can come together, chat, ask for prayer, watch videos together and connect

Our Facebook & Instagram Pages– A place of encouragement & hope 

Our YouTube Channel – The place to go for all our Sunday Services and other videos. If you subscribe to the channel you should receive notifications on new videos as they are posted.

Service Sheets – Sunday 22nd March, Sunday 29th March Sunday 5th April, Sunday 12th April – Easter Sunday, Sunday 26th April, Sunday 10th May, Sunday 17th May

 

Zoom – You can sign up for zoom for free, using your email address. This allows you to make video calls via your phone, tablet, laptop, PC, with lots of other people.

 

Regular Services, Devotionals, Reflections and Teaching
The Diocese of Ely will be posting regular reflections on their YouTube Channel. 

Other local churches, such as CSK, Chatteris and the Stilton group all have YouTube Channels & Facebook pages too and are posting regular content.

The Church of England are posting regular services on their YouTube channel & Facebook page too.

The Leprosy Mission are posting devotionals and services on their YouTube channel 

On the Spring Harvest YouTube Channel, between 13th-17th April, you will be able to virtually attend their conference!

A new Facebook group has been launched, Arts with God. The aim of the group is to build a community of people who want to discover more of God through the arts.

Reflections: The River – recorded last September when friends of Rev Sarah visited for her licensing.

Hope in Uncertain Times – During Holy Week Hope Together will be posting daily reflections on the social media platforms.

Where is God in the Coronavirus – Article from Tearfund

An online retreat for Holy Week – from Launde Abbey

Mothers’ Union Resources to support us in difficult times

What is God’s message to us in this troublesome time – Charles Stanley In Touch Ministries

Daily Hope – A freephone number for daily hymns, reflections and prayer. Please make those without internet aware of this service – More details coming soon.

Premier on Demand YouTube Channel

 

Podcasts
Mike Pilavachi & Andy Croft from Soul Survivor are doing a Daily Podcast

 

Encouraging Videos
Psalm 23 by Mike Pilavachi 

Scripture Union’s Message

Prayers from Watoto

 

Prayer
Prayer Stations at home – Look up, look in, look out Facebook Group

Thy Kingdom Come Family Prayer Adventure

Prayer for deliverance from the Coronavirus

An Hour of Prayer for the Coronavirus Pandemic

Christian Aid Prayers for Coronavirus

Call to Prayer (Prayer Points)

Hope Together – Prayer 2020

How to Pray video from Yemi Adedeji, Hope Together

Prayer hands for your windows

Our Online Prayer Room

The Prayer Room – Rev Rhona Knight

 

Worship Music
Holy Spirit, Living Breath of God

No Longer Slaves

Is He worthy?

Raise a Hallelujah

The Blessing

Waymaker

My Lighthouse

 

Family Resources

Click HERE to access all our Junior Church videos and Activity Sheets

Messy Church resources for activities at home

Mothers’ Union Faith in the Family activities

Little Worship Company – Family Devotionals

Church at Home – Diocese of Bristol

Coronavirus Social Story for SEN 

Coronavirus Book for Children

 

Ways to help others
Tap Twinning 
Yaxley & Farcet Covid-19 Support Network Facebook Group
Support Number 01733 794513 & email

Do you know someone who has been bereaved? – COVID-19 Bereavement Support Video from Hope Together

 

 

Support for Mental Health

Coping When All is Loss – Article by Martyn Payne

BBC’s How to protect your mental health

Supporting Children with Bereavement – Child Bereavement UK

 

Miscellaneous
If you are currently pregnant The Birthing Hub Facebook Group are answering all sorts of questions. They are providing an online community for local women to chat and get advice. The group is led by Lisa-Marie, an independent midwife, who has a pool of professionals that she is drawing on for advice in all areas. 

Government support for victims of Domestic Abuse

Make Yourself Heard – What to do if you need urgent help from 999, but can’t speak

There has been a significant rise in Bible sales, online searches for ‘How to pray’ and people attending online church. Is there someone you would like to share the Gospel with? Click Here to get a copy of Marks Gospel for £1, which you could send to someone you’re praying for.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Connection, Devotionals, Encouragment, Helpful, music, Praise, prayer, Reflections, Resources, services, Worship

Project Update

February 5, 2019 by St. Peter's

This month feels like a good opportunity to update everyone on the planned building works at St. Peter’s Church.

As many of you will be aware the church is planning to include an extra room upstairs, with a servery below. This work will provide additional space in the church and a servery area much more suited to the community’s needs. It will also allow for the addition of two more toilets. If you would like to view the plans, they are currently on display at the back of the church.

At the time of writing, we have received approval for the structural works and have gone out to tender. We are awaiting quotes from five companies which are due back in early February. Following this we will seek ecclesiastical approval from the Diocese and then we can begin to look at dates for the work to commence. Building works will not affect any weddings currently booked into the church.

Talking of weddings, we’d like to wish you all a Happy Valentine’s Day and congratulate any couples who have recently got engaged. This month always carries a big focus on love which can stir up a variety of emotions for people; we encourage you to celebrate this day as a reminder of God’s great love for us and ‘Let all that you do, be done with love’ 1 Corinthians 16:14.

If you’ve been thinking of coming along to church recently, we’d like to invite you to one of our services. On Sundays we have services at 9am, 11am and 7pm*; there’s something for everyone, come along, just as you are, and someone will be there to welcome you.
You can find details of all our services, groups and events on our website and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for updates.

God Bless,
St. Peter’s Church

lauraashley@saintpeters.co.uk
07939 449255

*Evening services take place on the 1st & 3rd Sunday of the month (3rd Sunday of the month is currently a film night)

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: additional space, approval, building, congratulations, engaged, love, planning, plans, quotes, servery, services, Sundays, tender, update, upstairs room, valentines, weddings

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