Dear Fellow Members of St Bartholomew’s We have good news and bad news, parochially speaking. First the good news – Andrea Colbrook has confirmed her appointment as rector of Ducklington-with-Hardwick and will be moving into the Rectory with her husband during June in good time for her induction service on the 4th July. Please put the date in your diary. We look…

Dear Friends, March starts with two important dates for me and ends with a very special one.  1st March is the interview day for our new Rector, the 2nd of March, Ash Wednesday, is the start of Lent and 31st March is my retirement day. Interview Day feels like the end of a very long process and it’s difficult for me to…

Dear Fellow Members of St Bartholomew’s Tricia rang me up on Thursday asking if I’d had the email she sent asking me to do a warden’s letter for the February monthly diary. I dutifully waffled about possibly having some recollection of it without actually having any idea at all. Back at home I discovered said email was in the Spam folder so…

Dear Friends Here we are at the beginning of a new year. I’m writing this in the time between Christmas and New Year, it always feels very unsettling for me. I have had the excitement of Christ’s birth, though somewhat subdued this year, and I now await the arrival of the New Year with renewed hope. I hope that our lives will…

It was a different Christmas for many, and many churches, this year.  This year some of our Christmas services have looked a little different as we all continue to face the COVID-19 pandemic. Bishop Steven and Bishop Alan have both sadly been unable to attend and preside at Christmas services this year due to falling ill. However, the Bishop of Dorchester, the…

Apologies for the confusion arising from our decisions to cancel or amend services over Christmas which are based on our concern for public safety amid a very transmissible Covid variant. Rightly or wrongly, we err on the side of caution. The situation now is: The service of the word at 10.30 on 19th will go ahead as planned. The Carol service at…

The Lay Ministers and myself held a meeting this evening primarily to discuss the question whether the Carol Service should go ahead given the sudden rise in Covid infections. On the latest projections these could, and probably almost certainly will, surpass 100,000 a day by next week. Regrettably we cannot square the circle of maintaining a safe environment while a highly transmissible…

Dear Fellow Members of St Bartholomew’s So, almost the end of another year, and just as we thought things were getting better re Covid, along comes another mutation to knock us, and the Government, backwards. Our plan is to keep St Bartholomew’s as safe as possible, so that means masks, social distancing, hand sanitisation, and generally being thoughtful and considerate. I for…

Dear Friends I can’t believe that I’m writing this for November. The past year seems to have flown by so quickly for me, and Christmas is just round the corner. We are now two months into our official vacancy. As you know a lot of work has been done in preparing for the next stage of the vacancy and November will be…