Dear A Church Near You authors,
While the world mourns the death of HM The Queen, we are contacting you to help us ensure local Church of England churches are ready to serve people across the country and Diocese in Europe during this difficult time.
If your church is offering a memorial service, a special event, book of condolence, prayers or another event related to The Queen’s death, we would appreciate you uploading to A Church Near You, using the tag ‘The Queen’ so that people can find out what’s going on nearby.
We will be linking to these services from the Church of England website and the A Church Near You homepage, so please do ensure you’ve added all the ways your church is marking this very sad occasion in the life of the nation. This will help those in your community who want to pray, pay their respects, or reflect on the death of The Queen are able to do so.
Liturgical, prayers and other guidance can be found on the Church of England website.
When adding services and events to your page, remember to follow these steps:
Log into A Church Near You, find the church page that you’d like to add a service to and click on the plus sign (+) next to the ‘Services and events’ tab on the left-hand side.
Enter the details of your events, including the name, duration and a brief description of what will happen during the service. This should be written in a way that would make sense to someone who might never have been to church – will there be prayers said, songs sung or bells rung?
Remember to tick all the tags that apply to your service or event, including ‘The Queen’, a new tag we have deployed to make it easier for users to find memorial events.
Ensure all the fields are completed, and press save. Please note, your event will not save unless you have included a description and duration.
If your church uses social media, we also have resources available for you to use.
We have permission from Press Association to use images of The Queen to mark her death. You can download here – please do remember to credit PA where possible.
We will also be releasing a prayer for the new King. Do look out for that on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. To see all this content, make sure you’re following us by searching for the ‘Church of England’ on social media platforms today.
The death of HM The Queen comes with great sadness and is particularly important for those in the Church of England, of which The Queen was the Supreme Governor.
We take this opportunity to thank God for all she did to serve this country and our Church.
We hope these resources are useful while you serve your local communities at this difficult time.
With thanks,
The Church of England Digital team