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St Mary’s & St Luke’s Services, Readings, News & Church at Home Resources for 18 April 2021 – Easter 3

Weekly Information Sheet

The Weekly Information Sheet has service times, in church and online, readings for the week & news & information. It is available on here weekly and in print in church. We are keeping this Blog for larger items that won’t easily fit on the Weekly Sheet and we will signpost to these from the printed sheet.


In Church Worship at St Luke’s & St Mary’s

Both St Luke’s and St Mary’s have reopened with a booking system is in place for Sunday Worship for the time being. Please click here for details of how to book. We are taking bookings until the end of May.

Face coverings and Social distancing will still be in place until the government say it’s safe not to. Please see the link above for further Covid-19 details re attending worship.


Funerals this past week
Josie Percival
Louis Moran

Funerals still to take place
Madeleine Tutt



Annual Parochial Church Meeting (APCM)

Our APCM for 2021 is on Sunday 16 May 2021 at 12 noon. Due to the Covid restrictions in place, and with permission from the Bishop of Chester, the meeting will be an online only meeting on Zoom. The meeting is open to anyone on the church’s Electoral Roll and you can register to attend the meeting here: bit.ly/stmarysapcm21
We will be electing 2 Church Wardens and 7 Members to the PCC. All the forms needed are below and are available at both churches.

There will also be access by phone, please contact Revd Mike for the details if you’d like to ‘attend’ that way.

The Church Electoral Roll

Ahead of the APCM, there will be a revision of the Electoral Roll, as this is just a revision, if you are already on the church’s Electoral Roll, there is no need to reapply. All the details and the relevant forms can be found here


Hearts to Remember

Perfect love drives out fear. 1 John 4:18

Thanks for all the hearts we’ve received from individuals and the local primary schools, it’s been an amazing and emotional response.

We believe that God’s perfect love drives out all fear, and that those people who have helped us have shown how love is stronger than fear.


Easter Resources from the Bible Society

As usual, the Bible Society has produced some fantastic resources for Easter 2021.

Howard Barker writes…

Easter resources https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/get-involved/easter/

My colleague wrote a good piece reflecting on a year of Covid-19  https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/latest/news/one-year-on-5-things-weve-learned-from-covid-19/

Also, the Bible Society [via Christians in Politics] gathered together a group of Christian MPs and Peers from across the political parties to share a message of renewed hope this Easter, through a recording of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

If you want a bit of Dai Woolridge (and why wouldn’t you?)-https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/spoken-truth/peter-a-twopart-easter-spoken-word/

Christian MPs and Peers
Part 1 – Peter: mock trial to denial
Part 2 – Peter: BBQ on a beach

Church at Home Resources for all ages

There are resources for Lent for all the family on our Lent Resources Page:  Click here


Together @ Home Resources

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.


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.org

The Bible Society Bible Book Club

This is a fantastic free resource that 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 St Mary’s & St Luke

The church’s finances are under extreme pressure at the moment. I would ask you to review your personal giving to the church. If you already give regularly then perhaps consider increasing your giving, if you don’t give regularly then perhaps consider doing this. I really do appreciate the giving that happens already and the extra giving that has taken place during the pandemic. However, due to the lack of income from not being in church and from not being able to let the church hall, plus our outgoings being fairly fixed, we have lost around £30,000 in the past 12 months. This obviously places us in a difficult and vulnerable financial position. To find out more about giving to church, the ways you can do it, and how you can do it in a tax-efficient way, please take a look below. Please keep our finances in your prayers.

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.

Click here to give online

Giving via you Bank – online or phone

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.
We’ve raised over £1600 through Easyfundraising. For more information on this please click here.

Giving Leaflet with

Click on the image to view/download the leaflet.