On Tuesday 17th March the Archbishops of Canterbury and York are calling for Church of England churches to put public worship on hold and become a “different sort of church” in the coming months to face the challenge of coronavirus.  They are calling for Church of England churches to put public worship on hold and become a “different sort of church” in the coming months to face the challenge of coronavirus.  If you would like to read the full Church of England press release, you can find that here.  Following this advice, we are immediately suspending all public worship, and all other church events, including choir and Sunday Stars.

First and foremost, we would like to stress that this is not the church 'closing down'.  The church has always been a movement of people, it just happens to have for a period used certain buildings at certain times.  We are still those people, the people of God, and we are still called to witness to him in how we live, how speak, and how we act.  We are still a people of faith, hope, and love, and each of us is still very much open, to the Spirit, and to his activity in the world.

But whilst we continue to 'be' church, we do need to change how we 'do' church for the time being.  It may even be that the things we discover forced upon us serve us so well that we continue in them when the crisis has passed.

We have spent a lot of time thinking about what we might be able to provide over the coming days - to support ourselves as a faith community, and also to support those around us.