Dear all,This Sunday morning we have our regular monthly service of Morning Prayer at 10:00. Join us for this special time of worship as we mark the second Sunday of Advent. Please linger afterwards for a cup of coffee or tea, as has become our little tradition for fellowship!We have lots happening in the life of our church.Annual MeetingWe will hold our annual general meeting for the Villars English Church Committee on Tuesday, 16 December at 19:30 via Zoom. If you have been worshipping regularly with us over the past year, you are welcome to join this meeting. Please speak to Seth for the link and details. The full agenda is published on our website.Sundays before ChristmasGuy Padfield will lead Evening Prayer on Sunday, 14 December.Sunday, 21 December will be a service of Evening Prayer led by Seth, and not Holy Communion, as St John’s will be holding their Carol Service that evening. You are warmly invited to attend the St John’s Carol Service or Evening Prayer in Villars. The All Saints Vevey Carol service is on 14 December.Christmas ServicesOur famous Christmas Eve tradition is a family-friendly and traditional service of lessons and carols (18:00). Plan to arrive early for a seat as this is the most popular service of the year! Following this, we will also have a quieter and more contemplative Eucharist to celebrate Christmas (20:00). This is our Christmas Eucharist and there is no service in Villars on Christmas Day.If you would like to help with a reading, please let me know. We will need lots of volunteers, ideally organised in advance!For Christmas Day services you are invited to join the congregations at St John’s or All Saints’ Vevey.All the services are on our website. Kind regards,SethRead More & Subscribe: https://mailchi.mp/7ca61349f261/special-sung-services-this-weekend-17466809
Dear all,It has been a wonderful summer so far for the Villars English Church community. Our pattern of weekly worship means we have been able to welcome new visitors each week to our services. Many are tourists visiting the area and are pleased to be able to join us for worship. Its been amazing to see how the original mission of this village church continues today.From church picnics (above) to a special service for Swiss National Day it has also been great to gather as a community in so many different ways.This week we welcome back Fr Chris Welsh, our locum priest from St John’s who will preside at Holy Communion at 18:00 on Sunday.You can find the pattern of weekly services on our website. We hope that you can join us, and please do share about our church community as this is the time of year when many are re-locating to the area.Kind regards,SethRead more or subscribe here: https://mailchi.mp/fa67b7606a69/special-sung-services-this-weekend-17464084
Tomorrow at 10:00 we have a service of Morning Prayer for the Last Sunday before Lent.After the service, all are invited to join us for a community pot luck lunch that will be hosted at the Swiss Reformed Church parish hall. This is a great opportunity to spend more time with one another and fellowship as a community.This week we begin the season of Lent. We will hold an Ash Wednesday service on 05 March at 18:00 with the imposition of ashes.In particular this week we pray for our new Suffragan Bishop in the Diocese in Europe, Andrew Norman. Andrew was consecrated by the Archbishop of York at Canterbury Cathedral, and will be installed at Holy Trinity, Gibraltar tomorrow.We continue in our updated pattern of services, with worship every Sunday. We hope to see you at one of these upcoming times of worship and fellowship. We still send service reminders via email, but not every week, so please do mark your diaries.First Sunday of the Month:10:00, Morning PrayerOther Sundays:18:00, Evening Prayer / Compline, Communion (3rd Sundays)
Dear Friends,After much deliberation and conversation as a community in the years following the pandemic, we are pleased to let you know that the Villars English Church will once again be offering regular, weekly services.We are a small community but we have been pleased to see the number of people passing through our church door, tourists and residents alike. By resuming a more regular pattern of worship, our prayer is that this can help to create a more dependable space for people to encounter God and grow in Christian community.We seek to resume in a small and measured way, and are initially committing to weekly services during the winter tourism season and through to Easter. However, the hope is that there will be every reason to continue throughout the year.The first Sunday of each month will remain at 10:00, and all other Sunday services will be at 18:00. The third Sunday evening will remain a Eucharist and the others will be a form of Night Prayer.These additional services will be simple and short. In most cases there will be no sermon, although perhaps a small reflection. Likewise, any music will be simple and most likely unaccompanied. It is a time for prayer, reflection, worship and community at the close of the day; all are welcome.We will see where this takes us. If you or anyone you know may be interested in joining us, please share this message, or indeed if you would like to volunteer in any capacity please do get in touch. We are always looking for people who can read, pray, teach, play or organise in any way.In a world that is so often lonely, we pray that the Villars English Church may continue to be a small light of God’s grace.With peace and every blessing this Epiphanytide, Seth
