Dear Friends
So much has happened since my last letter for the April/May magazine that it’s hard to know where to start!. At the time I wrote (mid-March) we were just in the process of entering into lockdown and I commented then on how Easter would be very different this year…and so it was. No public gatherings for worship for the first time in 800 years… But you can’t hold a good man down, can you, and so whether at home on TV, radio, skype, we celebrated the wonderful news of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, albeit socially distanced from one another (of course).
I was attending a webinar (for those of you unfamiliar with the term, a webinar is a seminar on the web) organised by the Church of England recently on welcoming people back to our churches. One of the contributors (a Vicar in London) spoke of seeing Jesus’ death and resurrection as offering an interesting parallel for our times. For just as Jesus’ resurrected body had a continuity with the past (the disciples could recognise him at times), it was also in some ways different (Jesus could come and go through locked doors, for example). And so, this Vicar said, that is like a metaphor for the church arising out of the current pandemic. There will be some sense of continuity with the past, but life will also be different in some ways. And I guess we may all be aware of some of the ways that is already true. For example, online services, where we have had over 40 people online at different times, or online Alpha courses (such as the one we have recently finished). It’s worship, it’s the Alpha course, but in a very different way to what we have been used to. And some of those changes may carry on as we continue to move out of lockdown. We will be continuing our Sunday morning Zoom service until at least September (do contact me if you want the link). Our next Alpha course this autumn (see elsewhere for details) will be held online. And at PCC we have talked about meeting online through at least the colder months of the year.
But the coronavirus will also influence other ways we do things as a church. So, whilst we have now resumed our services at 8am on Sundays and 10am on Wednesdays, we cannot currently share a common cup for communion or to sing together. I appreciate that may be deeply frustrating for some of us, and hopefully that is one change which will not last, but whilst it does we face choices. Will we return to worship in the church building or stay worshipping at home? Perhaps the church of the future is not only going to be a mixed economy in terms of offering traditional services and fresh expressions of church but also a mixed economy in terms of both offering physical and online services. Just as we are moving away from giving envelopes and cash on the plate to the Parish Giving Scheme (direct debits), our contactless giving machine, and website giving page (https://givealittle.co/campaigns/678f5f44-1515-41a5-a48b-794292e44c15), so further changes are I believe inevitable. Facing such changes is never an easy thing for us to deal with us as human beings (all of us find change difficult in different ways) but as we respond to such change we can do so in the knowledge that ‘Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever’ (Hebrews 13:8).
May God bless you, your families and loved ones, and watch over you in these challenging times.
Jeremy Tear
Pioneer Team Rector
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