St Mary’s & St Luke’s January 2021 Lockdown – Worship Information
National Lockdown and Public Worship
6 January 2021
From Mike, the Rector:
My priority, right from the beginning of this pandemic, has been to keep all those who attend worship and funerals (when it has been permissible) at St Mary’s & St Luke’s, safe. Whilst I understand attending worship in church is important, and that not everyone can access worship online, I also know that at times, joining together in a church building is not the safest thing to do. This is the first national lockdown when the government has allowed for Public Worship to continue. However, the Church of England and the Bishop of Chester, have given permission for churches, where it would be unsafe to remain open for worship, to close their buildings. I feel that during a National Lockdown, with the size and limitations of both of our church buildings, the correct thing to do is to close the church buildings for Public Worship.
With this in mind, myself, the Wardens and the PCC, with the permission of the Bishop of Chester, have agreed to suspend Public Worship in St Mary’s and St Luke’s for the time being. We will assess this on a regular basis and update this page.
We will continue to offer live online worship from St Mary’s each Sunday and we will help to resource those who can’t access online worship.
Funerals will continue to take place in St Mary’s adhering to the latest government guidance with 30 people allowed in church and no gatherings of people outside allowed.
Baptisms are suspended other than emergency Baptisms.
Weddings are not allowed at the moment apart from within the government recommendation as follows: “weddings should only take place in exceptional circumstances, for example, an urgent marriage where one of those getting married is seriously ill and not expected to recover, or is to undergo debilitating treatment or life-changing surgery.”
We will continue to offer Pastoral Care within the parish, please contact me if we can help and we will respond in a Covid-19 secure appropriate way.
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Morning Prayer: is on Zoom and is usually on Mon, Tues & Thurs each week. You can join us on Zoom here: bit.ly/930mp the service lasts for 20 mins.
