To: Members of the benefice of 4 Sharnford RoadSapcote, Sharnford and Wigston Parva Sapcote LE9 4JN16 July 2020Dear friends,How are you? I hope you are all well.Church is Changing, what’s happening?About a month ago I sent you details of how our church buildings in Sapcote and Sharnford were opening for individual prayer. This was conditional on our implementation of controls to ensure that people are as safe as possible. It was wonderful to meet a number of you there! We have also kept people up to date with developments, via the re-introduction of our weekly news sheet (by email or post). In our news sheet we indicated that we would open these two buildings for worship on Sunday July 19th for Family Holy Communion, and the purpose of this letter is to give you more details. Also, I hope that this letter will help you to decide whether or not to join in with any of our forthcoming worship. Please note that Messy Church isn’t able to meet physically at the moment, there is no plan for midweek Holy Communion because of cleaning restrictions and St. Mary’s Church, Wigston Parva remains closed due to very limited capacity. We have no weddings booked for 2020, no baptisms are being booked at the moment, but we do have provision to host funerals, on Wednesdays only, with limited numbers.Our worship for the next few Sundays will look, sound and feel very different to what we experienced at the beginning of 2020! Both church buildings have facilities/signage to encourage good hygiene and social distancing. Order of service cards will be placed on your seats- you can take these home and bring them with you to worship next time, or leave them in a box on the way out. Worship will not include singing and will be shorter in duration.For Holy Communion there will be no sharing of the peace, and there will be no wine. I will ensure that Church of England guidelines are followed, eg requiring you to stand to receive bread wafers whilst keeping your distance from myself and others. We are also required to keep a list of those who attend. Although this will seem strange at first, I hope and pray that we will meet with God and be encouraged in our Christian faith. Over the months, as restrictions allow, we will re-introduce missing elements of worship.St.Helens Church changes.We are going to trial a 10am start each Sunday to see if it can work for us. This will mean that I will leave very soon after our worship in order to lead worship at Sapcote at 11am.We plan to hold worship at 10am each Sunday as follows :Family Holy Communion at 10am on Sundays 19 July, 30 AugustFamily Worship at 10am on Sundays 2 August, 6 September. No refreshments afterwards.Morning Worship at 10am on Sunday 16 AugustMorning Prayer at 10am on Sundays 26 July, 9 August, 23 August Morning Prayer will be a short service led by myself from the front. It will be followed by time for individual prayer for those who want to pray longer.All Saints Church changes.We plan to hold worship at 11am each Sunday as follows:Family Holy Communion at 11am on Sundays 19 July, 2 & 30 August .Morning Worship at 11am on Sundays 26 July, 9 & 16 & 23 August, 6 September.The projector will not be used and any prayer ministry will take place, at a safe distance, after our worship has ended.Worship with us at home?All Saints Church has a wifi connection that may be good enough for us to livestream our 11am Sunday worship via Zoom. This means that anyone with a phone can listen in to our worship. To find out how to do this please talk to Dave Harrold on 07786985932 before Sunday. Also, if you are online and have Zoom, or can download Zoom, you can join our 11am worship online. The codes to join are the same as for our midweek meeting, namely meeting number 81762098875 and passcode(from Dave Harrold) . If you are on email you will find attachments to help follow our worship This Sunday I will also host a chat via Zoom after 11am worship starting at 12 noon and ending at 12.30pm using meeting number 6269841420 and password “Chat”.Your responseAlthough risks of spreading Covid 19 in our buildings are being minimised, they can’t be removed altogether. Therefore, each of us must consider carefully our own situation, and decide whether or not to visit our church buildings- especially if we have underlying health conditions or are shielding others with such health conditions. The Church of Englandwebsite has a lot more detailed information. If anyone is in any doubt, please stay at home and continue to pray at home for the time being. Please could you respond to this letter to let me know whether or not you feel able to return to worship? If you can join us physically, or via Zoom, I will see you there and take that as a yes! If not, it would be really helpful for me to know about your personal situation. So, please reply to me via email micknorman@msn.com, write to me to the address at the top of this letter or phone me on 01455-272215. I would be really delighted to hear from you whatever your news.My prayers are with us all as we continue on this ever-changing road to recovery.With all God’s blessing during these challenging times.Rev Mick
Dear friends,How are you? I hope you are all well.Church is Changing, what’s happening?Last week I sent you details of two local videos and my thoughts on what might happen as lockdown restrictions ease. I also reminded you of the Church of England prayer line (0800 8048044) and our Wednesday 7.30pm Zoom meetings (ID 81762098875, password obtained from host, Dave Harrold, tel: 07786985932 or email: daverharrold@aol.com). The anticipated Government announcement, due at the end of May, came on 6th June. You may have heard that church buildings are allowed to open for individual prayer from 15th June. Opening buildings is conditional on implementing controls to ensure that people are as safe as possible. Nationally this is part of a picture of small easements on the lockdown.In our benefice, All Saints Church, Sapcote will open on Sunday 21st June between 11am and 12 noon. This is for individual prayer and you can arrive and leave at any time between these times.St.Helen’s Church, Sharnford is working towards opening for individual prayer in July. St.Mary’s Church isn’t safe to open whilst distancing is set at two metres, because it is a small building with only one entrance/exit.Currently I am working through a set of control (Covid19 risk reduction) measures for All Saints Church so that we can open our church building and church hall on 21st June for an hour. These include cleaning, signage and a one-way system. (Further details can be found on the Church of England website.) It is anticipated that these buildings will then close again until 28th June.Although risks of spreading Covid 19 in our buildings are being minimised they can’t be removed altogether. Therefore, each of us must consider carefully our own situation and decide whether or not to visit our church buildings- especially if we have underlying health conditions or are shielding others with such health conditions. If anyone is in any doubt, please stay at home and continue to pray at home. I still hope, in due course, to offer garden communions (home communion in a garden!) for those affected in this way.Over the coming weeks we are expecting more changes and developments, so I have asked Pauline Hazlewood to restore our weekly church news sheet. Thank you Pauline! Each week this will bring you our latest news including any local events. To begin with, this will be a benefice news sheet. My prayers are with us all as we start out on the road to recovery,With all God’s blessing during these challenging times,Rev Mick
A hard copy of the message appears below and a DOWNLOAD link to the song words is top right.For access to the service go to the Youtube site and search for “worship with rev mick on trinity sunday” or click hereTrinity Sunday, 7 June 2020On this Trinity Sunday, my message is that God communicates overflowing LOVE. God,Father, Son and Holy Spirit are in perfect loving harmony and communicating love thatoverflows to our world.We all know how important good communication is, and how painful poor communicationcan be. During the Lockdown it has been much harder to communicate well with peopleoutside our household. I have been phoning, emailing, You-tubing, writing, evenZooming, but I’m convinced that these are only a poor substitute for face-to-face meetingwhen it comes to communication. The joy of recent mini family reunions followinglockdown easements is a great example of this.Communication is important to God. That is why God sent Jesus, Son of God, tocommunicate with us. God could have sent a letter, a bunch of flowers, a card, a phonecall, a text ……….. but God chose to send a person, Jesus Christ. Jesus shows us thedepth of God’s love, and the good news is that Jesus brings us back into communicationwith God. Faith in Jesus removes the barrier to God and means we can experience God’slove, pray to God and worship God.God also speaks to the Christian community today through Jesus’ words and actions. InMatthew 28, sometimes called the Great Commission, we hear the call to the firstdisciples, and to all future disciples, to bring God’s message of love to the ends of theearth. For this to happen there has to be a co-operation between Jesus’ disciples and God,the Holy Trinity. This loving partnership has flourished for over twenty centuries andcontinues today. Jesus promises that we will know His presence, by the Holy Spirit, as wespread God’s love today.This Great Commission is something that we do together as the Christian Community.Therefore, we look forward to more face to face meetings to help one another to bringGod’s love afresh to those around us. We look forward to the return of some form ofpublic worship, baptism, communion – even with the necessity of social distancing.At the same time we recognise that we are in the middle of a communication revolution inour world with more and more online channels. There have never been so may differentpossible ways to communicate with people! So let us ask God to help us to develop thebest possible ways to communicate the love of God in 2020 and beyond.Now that some lockdown restrictions have been eased, I have a question for all of us,myself included. “Is there someone we might be able to meet up with, either outside or ina garden, to show that we care about them?”And God, the Holy Trinity, who communicates overflowing love is with us as wecommunicate God’s love in what we say and do.Rev Mick Norman Rector
To:Members of the benefice of 4,Sharnford RoadSapcote, Sharnford and Wigston Parva Sapcote LE9 4JN 4 June 2020Church is Changing, what’s happening?Three weeks ago ago I sent you details of our Ascension Day worship together with Thy Kingdom Come information. Thank you to everyone who took on board the message and supported the Thy Kingdom Come prayer initiative. Also I reminded you of the new Church of England prayer line (0800 804 8044) and our Wednesday 7.30pm Bible Study Zoom meetings (ID 81762098875 - password obtained from host, Dave Harrold, tel: 07786985932 or email: daverharrold@aol.com ). Below are details of two more local videos followed by my thoughts on what might happen later this year if lockdown restrictions ease further.My latest worship videos are available now on YouTube. Please enter the YouTube site andsearch for “worship with rev mick on trinity sunday” or click here. The songs and talk from the video areattached with this letter for everybody. In addition I have teamed up with Richard Dixon, ourevangelist with permission to officiate, to produce a further video. Again please enter the YouTubesite and search for “worship with rev mick once you’ve seen this” or click here which is aimed at those whoare less familiar with Christian worship, to explain why we do what we do.People are starting to ask me when our buildings might open. We were hoping to have aGovernment announcement about this at the end of May but it didn’t happen! Our bishops wroteto us about this explaining that the delay may be due to the ‘R’ value being too close to 1.Reading between the lines it looks like that there may be phasing ahead if restrictions ease egPhase 1: Church buildings open for private prayer with social distancingPhase 2: Church buildings open for worship for very small numbers with social distancing.Phase 3: Church buildings open for worship for numbers allowable within social distancingAll of the above are subject to Government/Church authorities approval and to the localcompletion of assessments/systems/signage. This means that different church buildings couldopen for different purposes at different dates- nationally and locally. I am aware that some of ourmembers will not feel able to join in any phases, such as 1-3, due to underlying health conditionsor due to shielding others with health conditions. Therefore I am hoping to offer gardencommunions (home communion in a garden!) for those affected in this way (I will discuss thiswith you on the phone first). If there is a phase 2, guidelines may allow us to hold outdoorworship, in order to cater for a larger number more safely. Eventually we hope to put out some ofour worship on Zoom which can then be heard live by anyone with a phone - details to follow.For now our church buildings continue to be closed. I continue to work, pray and worship fromhome and I am usually available on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Please get hold ofme on the phone 01455-272215, especially during the day, or by email micknorman@msn.com.Please continue to ask for help whenever you need it, and encourage others to do the same.With love and prayersRev Mick
