Dear Friends
How wonderful that we are on the verge of having our beautiful church building open, once again, for people to come into for private prayer. The members of our leadership team are currently working hard to enable the safe opening of the church in line with recent government guidance.
It will probably be a while before we can all be together in church for our regular services, but for now we can look forward to spending time in the quietness and space of our church, for our individual prayer and contemplation, away from our daily distractions.
At housegroup we are following a bible study course on prayer (Bold I Approach), which is looking at the glories and struggles of getting to grips with Christian prayer. We were asked how do you think of God as you pray to him? As you can imagine there were many answers, for example some of us visualised God and some felt his presence. So we asked each other who do you pray to – God or Jesus? I wonder what your answer would be. Aren’t they the same, three persons in one God? This study session did challenge my view of prayer but made it so clear to me that we pray to God through Jesus by the Holy Spirit. So simply put but powerful. It was remarkable that we should be studying this just after Trinity Sunday.
We have managed to continue with housegroup throughout the lockdown by meeting on Zoom. If anyone would like to join us or start up their own housegroup then please get in contact with Faith Truran or myself.
This week, as one of the Street Pastor coordinators, I was able to join an online meeting with the Honary Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group. Fascinating title! He was telling us about the plans to open pubs at the beginning of July, but as there would be so many restrictions some pubs would not be able to cope. This has been a very anxious time for our publicans. He was concerned that since the closure of the pubs there had been a loss of community, support and social interaction for many people and asked for our prayers for them and for the publicans. Interestingly he pointed out that, despite people now drinking more at home there had not been a boom in alcohol consumption during lockdown.
I would like to thank those of you who responded to the email/letter (June 2nd) from Paul with your views on returning to church. Rosie Evans, our PCC secretary is collating the responses and feeding back to the team. It’s not too late to send her your views if you haven’t responded yet; it will help greatly with our planning of future services. We want to be able to offer the best format for everyone. In the meantime please continue to join us on Sundays for our Zoom church services and for virtual coffee afterwards. If you have any concerns do feel free to talk to Roger or myself.
With further lockdown restrictions lifting this weekend do take care and enjoy a little bit more freedom with friends and family. Take time to look and marvel at God’s creation.
God Bless
Gill
Churchwarden