Opening the Church Building
Saturdays:
St Helen's Church is open for private individual prayer, every Saturday between 10 am and 12 noon. Rev'd Mary has made a video explaining the arrangements that are in place to enable this to happen.
Click on the link to see Rev'd Mary's video.
Wednesdays & Sundays:
We are now holding Holy Communion services in church, 10am every Wednesdays & 10.30am on the second, third and fourth Sundays of the month. (They are live on Facebook and available for catch-up here on the Church Life tab.)
To help us make sure that the number of people who come along to the services can be accommodated in the socially-distanced seats available, please 'book' a seat:
Jill Chapman will take bookings on sthelensashby@gmail.com
Notices and letters
What's coming up?
An Evening to ask Four Questions
As we consider 'life after lock-down', and a time when we will all be in more normal circulation again, we need to ask ourselves Four Questions:
1. What did we do before lock-down that we want to begin again?
2. What did we do before lock-down that we don't want to begin again?
3. What have we done during lock-down that we want to continue?
4. What have we done during lock-down that we don't want to continue?
Revd Mary invites everyone to an evening on Zoom to explore these four questions. We will then feed the outcome of these discussions into our APCM.
This will be on …
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19th October
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from 7.00-9.00pm
The first 30 minutes will be a social time to enable us to catch up with one another after so long apart!
APCM
27
th October 7.30pm
Our postponed Annual Parochial Church Meeting will now be taking place on 27
th October 7.30pm both in the church building and, simultaneously, online via Zoom. Please let Jill Chapman know (sthelensashby@gmail.com 07725519453) if you would like to attend the meeting in the building (so that we can make sure that we do not exceed our social distancing capacity) or if you would like to attend online (so that we can issue the Zoom link.)
Click on the title to download the annual report on 2019.
Pastoral Principles for Living Well Together
The Church of England is asking all its parishes to ready themselves for conversations about human sexuality. To help they are producing resources called Living in Love and Faith which will be available to us next year.
In the meantime, they are asking us to engage in a series of conversations called 'Pastoral Principles'. These are designed to help us have good conversations even on challenging topics; conversations where we are open and attentive to others, and alert to our own assumptions, preferences, even prejudices. They are designed, too, to help us look at our life together and identify any hidden barriers which might make some feel unwelcome among us.
In Sept and Oct, our Flagstaff Family will explore these 'Pastoral Principles' together on Zoom, meeting together from 7.30-9.00pm
Principles still to come -
21st Oct Admit hypocrisy
28th Oct Pay attention to power
If you'd like to learn more about good conversation and about our welcome to others please email Revd Mary at revmarygregory@aol.co.uk for the Zoom link.
St Helen’s Gift Day: 1st November 2020
Please read Revd Mary's letter here
A Time to Remember: our annual memorial service
On Sunday 1st November at 6.30pm we will hold our annual memorial service, A time to Remember.
Because of restrictions on socially-distanced numbers in church, this will be held in the building with service leaders and musicians present, but with others invited to join with us via Facebook live.
This will be a service for all in the Flagstaff Family of Churches, and will be on the Flagstaff Facebook page – search on Facebook for The Flagstaff Family of Churches and ‘like’ the page.
If you would like to have someone remembered in the service, in the reading of the names of those who have died, please email their name to Jill Chapman at sthelensashby@gmail.com.
Remembrance Sunday
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, Remembrance Sunday will be marked differently this year. Depending on how Government advice develops between now and then, there will either be a short service on the Bath Grounds for those allocated tickets (a limited number of around 100 people) OR the service will be in St Helen's, but closed to the public. In either event, the service, at 10.45am, will be streamed live to the Town Council Facebook page. There will be no parade and no organised wreath laying at the war memorial on Market Street. I know we all understand why things have to be different this year and that our priority must be to protect the most vulnerable and to do what we can to halt the spread of the virus.
There will be a said service of Holy Communion that afternoon at 4pm in St Helen's, streamed live to Facebook.
Revd Mary
Worship Pattern
Sunday worship
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1st Sunday
10.30am All-Age worship, streamed live from home
4.00pm Holy Communion at Isley Walton
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2nd Sunday
10.30am Holy Communion, streamed live from St Helen’s
4.00pm Holy Communion at Worthington
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3rd Sunday
10.30am Holy Communion, streamed live from St Helen’s
4.00pm Holy Communion at Staunton Harold
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4th Sunday
10.30am Holy Communion, streamed live from St Helen’s
4.00pm Holy Communion at Breedon on the Hill
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5th Sunday
10.30am Flagstaff Family Service of Holy Communion, streamed live from home.
Booking: To help us make sure that the number of people who come along to the services can be accommodated in the socially-distanced seats available, please 'book' a seat:
Christina Walmsley will take bookings for Worthington’s services via christina@stmatthewsworthington.net
Jill Chapman will take bookings for all other services on sthelensashby@gmail.com
Wednesday worship
The 10.00am service of Holy Communion is streamed live from St Helen's Church.
- Jill Chapman will take bookings on sthelensashby@gmail.com
Daily Prayer
Prayer for the Day is posted to our churches Facebook pages at around 8am each day except Wednesday and Sunday.
Compline/Night Prayer
We are having a pause from online Compline for October and November. We will resume in Advent.
Recordings of St Helen's Church services, service booklets and hymn sheets can be found here on the website in Church Life, and also on the St Helen's Facebook page
Gathering Stories, Generating Insights
3rd Sept - Shaped by God
Dear St Helen's,
Today as part of the Shaped by God Together Process, our Bishops Martyn & Guli issue a Call for Prayer, as we discern together how God is reshaping his church in these days, and as we plan for the future. Your role in this is vital and alongside praying we want to invite you to share your own stories of church, faith and the experience of following Jesus, in the last 6 months during this turbulent time of Covid, lockdown(s) and significant disruption.
The ‘Gathering Stories, Generating Insights’ process uses a storytelling inquiry model. We are gathering stories across the diocese so that we can reflect and discern our future direction. We had originally intended to carry out this process over a much longer timescale, but Covid-19, the associated impacts of the lockdown(s) on our society and economy have caused us to move faster than anticipated. Thus, we are focussing on our experience of being members of a community of faith throughout the lockdown(s) imposed as a result of Covid-19 and seeking to discover how we can carry our learning and experiences forward into the future, whilst honouring all that has gone before.
You can contribute very easily by clicking here and sharing a story, anecdote or example in response to one of 3 simple questions. It will take you about 10 minutes. You don’t need to tell a long or complex story – in fact the shorter and simpler contributions work best in this process – imagine being at a social or a family event and you are sharing an experience.
We are very keen to hear from as wide a range of people as possible. We are particularly keen to hear from young people (11-18), young adults (18-24), people of BAME heritage and those from more deprived communities - but there is really no restriction - we want to hear from as many people as possible – and you can tell more than 1 story.
With thanks and prayers
Rev Canon Dr Stuart Burns
Director of Mission and Ministry