St Mary’s & St Luke’s Services, Readings, News & Church at Home Resources for 16 May 2021 – Easter 7
This is Christian Aid Week
Click Here to see more information about this year’s activities and how you give
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.
Come and join us in church at St Luke’s & St Mary’s
We would love to see you back in church!
At St Mary’s we have now opened up all the pews in church with an ‘offset’ seating system in place to maintain social distancing. If it feels the right time for you, we’d love to see you in church. From June we are planning to stop using the booking system.
Face coverings and Social distancing are still in place until the government say it’s safe not to. Please see the link above for further Covid-19 details re attending worship.
Margaret Wooldridge’s funeral will be at St Mary’s on Monday 24 May at 1:45pm. Please bear in mind that numbers are limited in church due to social distancing, so it may not be possible to accommodate everyone. However, her funeral will be live streamed here: youtu.be/XIwc2cIJUt8.Revd Mike (Rector).
Funerals this past week
David Ballard
Margarita Jones
Funerals still to take place
Margaret Wooldridge
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: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMsceuoqD8pHdGRAYJmGQa4NqluoS5c-Ymj
We will be electing 2 Church Wardens and 7 Members to the PCC. All the forms needed are here 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
The Electoral Roll had a period of revision ahead of the APCM which finished on Sunday 25 April. The Roll is available for inspection in the porch at St Mary’s or online here.
Christian Aid Week 2021
Thank you to all who donated to Christian Aid over the past few weeks. Our Christian Aid Week collection was £365.00 (£260 via JustGiving, £55 cash given at church services (paid in via JustGiving) & a £50 Charities Aid Fund voucher). The Sponsored Walk raised £125, thanks to all who walked and raised the money. If you haven’t had chance to give you can still do so at bit.ly/caweek21 .
Sponsored Swim Cancelled, however…
Due to the pandemic, we were not able to do the annual CA sponsored swim, but this year our young people (and some older) are doing a sponsored walk and plan to walk 20,000 steps (10 miles) from 10th to 16th May (CA Week). If you would like to sponsor them as a group, or if you would like to take part, give Sarah Turnbull a call (01270 665742) for more details. Through this we will raise money to support people in places like Kenya who are suffering from the impact of climate change.
Church at Home Resources for all ages
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.
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.
