29th August 2020
Benefice of Farleigh, Candover and Wield
e-mail: davidchattell172@btinternet.com e-mail:- stevemourant@btinternet.com
01256 389474 01256 381217
Living the life...telling the story....visit us at http://www.farleighcandoverandwield.org.uk
Dear friends,
Who would have said in January this year we would have been worshipping online for six months? We do not know what lies ahead, even tomorrow, and one thing to which we have been awakened since the beginning of the crisis around the world, is the brevity of life and how suddenly it can end. James 4:”Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
Our times and lives are in His hands – putting our trust in Him each day, asking for His guidance and not taking anything for granted other than we know He loves us and is with us, lies at the heart of Christian existence.
Tomorrow will be our final weekly online service for the benefice: it may be possible that David will continue some short ones for those housebound and wanting to worship at home, but our technical “whizzers” will not be available – David’s son Will returns to university very soon, and Stephen’s daughter Chloë, who has knit together the services at his end of the benefice, starts a three month contract this weekend in Manchester at Media City and so will be away from her super-computer that does the job.
But we can return to regular Sunday worship fully: we will send out a more detailed letter after the weekend with some guidelines for worship, which, of course, may change without warning as government and the central Church group who issue them may spring things on us without much notice – as they did on 15 August, when, on a Saturday we were told choirs/worship groups were now allowed to lead singing in church from the following day..
Oxdrove published some “lockdown” stories last month, and we hope to do the same in “Hill and Dale” in October’s edition – please note for “Hill and Dale” that all contributions must now be sent to: hillanddaleeditor@gmail.com.
Sunday, August 30th’s Service can be found either by clicking on this link or going into the benefice website (click on blue line above) https://youtu.be/pp_7ku00Gqo
We will be making more use of the benefice website with some changes coming up in next few weeks.
We will publish a couple more of these weekly letters – next week there’ll be two, one midweek with the details mentioned above and another next weekend, as we enter September, and parish magazines will be back in full swing by then. PLEASE do feedback to us your thoughts, your experiences of worship online, and whether this is something that would help you in your walk with God if you are housebound – with full Sundays coming up, the time to put these services together will diminish rapidly, but we are aware that there has been a huge interest generated across the world as well as in this country from many, many more people than usually worship in our church buildings, so we don’t want to lose any locally.
Prayer times continue on Wednesdays 9.00 to 9.30 am on Zoom, so you are most welcome to join in – contact peter.c.w.raine@btinternet.com, the Wednesday fellowship group will restart in a couple of weeks, and Stephen is planning both a daytime and an evening “Exploring Faith “group, the latter on Thursdays, possibly at Cliddesden Church as we can socially distance, there are kitchen and toilet facilities available. You may know someone who wants answers to the questions of life – get them to contact Stephen(contact details above) or bring them along.
May God bless each of you as we re-join one another in our buildings for worship.
With our prayers and greetings,
David and Stephen