The Prime Minister has announced that churches may open for worship as well as private prayer from 4th July. Weddings as well as funerals will also be able to take place in church. This is welcome news for many of us, but there will still be restrictions in place and we must continue to take every precaution to avoid spreading Covid-19. Some people will feel more comfortable continuing to worship from home, and there are also people who cannot for various reasons make it to church on a Sunday morning.
We will be taking a cautious approach to returning to church. It will be easier in our larger churches where there is plenty of space to circulate. Our aim will be to hold one service in the benefice each Sunday to begin with and we will not start to hold services in any church until we are sure it is safe to do so. Meanwhile, we will continue to live stream services on facebook.com/WingfieldChurch. Café Church will continue to be held via Zoom for now (get in touch if you would like an invitation). And Messy Church will continue online too (facebook.com/HoxneMC). Our programme of online services for July is in this newsletter. We will publish news of services in church as soon as we can.
We want to learn from the experience of lockdown for the future. In particular, we want to make our services accessible to a wider range of people and to stay in touch through a variety of means. Let’s keep the love and care for each other which we have seen during the lockdown as restrictions are eased. So it’s not just back to church, but forward into God’s kingdom of love and peace.