St Mary’s & St Luke’s News & Church at Home Resources for 06 December 2020 – Advent 2
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, Tues & Thursday
Online only on Zoom – bit.ly/930mp
Click below to view our channels
In Church
This Week
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 up until midday on Saturday
Wednesday: Midweek Holy Communion – no booking required
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Join us for an opportunity to draw closer to God this Advent by joining in with our Advent Couse.
On Zoom or Online or on Paper (yes paper!) at home.
Materials available from 4 Dec to download or collect from the Rectory (box on the doorstep).
Zoom is weekly 7, 14, 21 Dec 7.30pm. Register for Zoom at: bit.ly/adventstudy20
Full details can be found here
It’s been good to see some stars appearing – let’s see some more ?
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. More details can be found here.
This Sunday we Reopen Our Churches – Welcome back!!
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Wednesday 10 am Holy Communion Service will resume this 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, Tues & Thurs each week. You can join us on Zoom here: bit.ly/930mp the service lasts for 20 mins.
Private Individual Prayer has finished for now, 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.
Christmas Services
Christmas will be different in church this year like in all other parts of our lives!
We are finalising our services for Christmas, whilst reviewing the guidance and what works for us, and we will to publish our Christmas Services in the next few days with how you can be involved.
However, without being able to sing carols, most of our Christmas services will not work in church and will be online this year. We will definitely be having an online Nine Lessons and Carols service and a ‘favourites’ Carol service – dates and times to be confirmed.
Paul and Mike did a risk assessment for 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 and safe option.
To keep us all safe and well, it also looks likely that the Midnight Communion service will be online only.
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.
There will be a service of Holy Communion Service at each church on Christmas Day. Again, a booking will be required and bookings for these services are open now. bit.ly/book4worship
Christmas Household Bubbles: 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.
In the meantime, some Online Advent Service from other places
Sing Christingle – a National Christingle Service
We warmly welcome you to our first ever National Christingle Service in partnership with the Church of England on Sunday 13th December at 9am.
How to watch. This will be streamed on the Church of England’s website, Facebook and YouTube channels and we’d love it if you tuned in to share the light with the whole country.
The service will include a few words from HRH The Duchess of Gloucester, the Archbishop of Canterbury who will be lighting the Advent Candle, as well as our Vice-Chair of Trustees, the Bishop of Derby Libby Lane. We’ll also see a special performance from award winning number one soprano Joanna Forest, and join young people lighting the Christingles. It is set to be a magical event.
You can register for more info here
A Christian Aid Advent Service
Our friends at St Andrew’s Crewe are hosting this online-only service with participants from many churches in the Deanery, including ours!
Sunday 13 December at 4pm on their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/standrewschurchcrewe
Carols on the Doorstep
This looks fantastic! Why not invite your neighbours to sing carols with you, them on their doorstep and you on yours of course!
Sunday 20th December at 5:30pm for 20 minutes – the Carols will be played on Premiere Radio so each household listens in at the same time and sings along – great, simple idea for these times.
All the information and resources including carol sheets and invites can be found here: https://www.carolsonthedoorstep.co.uk/
Draw closes today – don’t forget to buy your tickets!!
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
Funerals
Funerals this past week:
Richard Charles Pugh
Funerals still to take place
Christine Ann Nelson & Roy Forster
Please keep their families in your prayers.
Here’s our monthly Foodbank data for November that you may wish to share with your congregations:-
- Donations of food received weighed 3,956kg and we were able to help 176 people during the month
If you are able to donate, we are currently running low on milk, long-life cakes/puddings, sugar, tinned meat pies, and rice pudding.
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.
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.
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.