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-35560037846000213106039687500453136038227000Christ Church StocksbridgeCrane Moor Methodist Church27876574930Wednesday 24th June 202000Wednesday 24th June 2020Green Moor Methodist ChurchDear There’s quite a lot to talk about this week. Thank you for sending back your voting forms. Its not too late if you get yours off now. I will stop collecting them on 30 June, and make a final count. At the moment I have had over 50 responses from over 80 people. They are almost unanimous in granting the right to the Leadership Team to manage business until we can have another Church Meeting. A few people asked for help to watch the Sunday service and we will follow that up as soon as possible. The Government has said that, with social distancing and other measures, church worship can start from July. Obviously we are waiting for more guidance on this, and from the URC and Methodist national bodies, and we expect that in the next week o two. However, when we had our first online Zoom Leadership Team meeting this week, we were all quite sure that things will not be starting up immediately all at once. There is no imperative to start while we don’t feel safe. No-one will be asked or expected to come to anything that they do not feel safe about. There is a lot of work to do to make the building safe and socially distanced, and to work out how access and cleaning would happen. At the moment we do not expect to be open for Sunday worship until the beginning of September at the earliest. We are working on a strategy for how we can do this.This strategy will involve us doing a risk assessment for each activity at church: worship, meetings, church groups, community groups, and groups that rent the rooms. In each case we will work with the meeting or group to look at its own situation and to agree with them when they might be able to return and under what arrangements. Obviously no group will be forced to re-start before it wants to do so. Some in each category will want to start before others. We may be able to have private weddings and baptisms with restricted numbers. Once we have finalised this I will share it with you all before we proceed.In the immediate future we will continue with the online Sunday service. In fact we expect that we will continue to stream the service online, even after we start the services at a future date. We will continue to do that I expect forever, so that people who cannot get to church now, or in the future, will be able to join us on Sunday mornings. The Leadership Team meeting agreed to go ahead with installing the equipment in church ready for opening up. And we discussed ideas for how we can extend our outreach in our community in future. At first, I expect that I will move the online service on Sundays to be delivered from in the church itself. Then, because there is a ban on hymn-singing and there will be small numbers, I am looking at how we could then move to a short simple devotional service safely in church. But there is no timetable for this yet. And I will be bringing the proposals to the Leadership Team at its next meeting in mid-July. Some news items:We’ve had a greeting from Simon Copley to our church, and I hope to be able to include it in next week’s letter.This week we will be saying farewell to James Kissack, as he goes from the Sheffield URC Team Ministry, to become the Moderator of the Yorkshire Synod. We wish him well and John Cornell will be passing on our greeting at a Zoom meeting in his honour.Christine Utting has been spending time with her mother, who is struggling with her eyesight, and we send out love to them both.David Hurrell has now been moved back to the nursing home in Chapeltown after a week or so in hospital getting his medication balanced. Andrew and David and Amy have kept me updated and we send our love them all.Maureen and Ken Horton have celebrated their wedding anniversary, and so have Brenda and Bill Emsley. Congratulations to them all.Simon has asked me to give a special “Thank-you” to all of you who have made such a great effort to get your weekly offering to us. It has made a valuable difference to our monthly cash-flow. We have been grateful for a substantial donation to our Mission and Ministry Fund this week, to support our valued pastoral work and the ministry of all of the congregation to each other.Councillor Julie Grocutt and the Headmaster at the High School are continuing our discussions about possible support for a few of the most disadvantaged children during the summer. An anonymous donation has helped some of these children with laptops, and other donations have been committed if needed. Wonderful love and response from the church.I have included a copy of last week’s sermon again. Some people have said they appreciated being able to read it. I’m not sure I will always be able to do it, but I will when I can.It looks as if we are beginning to look forward to some hope. I don’t think things will ever be the same again. There are lots of good things we have learned and we will have to hold tight not to lose them. Our fellowship is not dependent on meeting, but it is certainly enhanced by being together, and we can see light at the end of the tunnel.Best wishes to you allIan Lucraft165544585172550-1524009458960Christ Church Stocksbridge LEP, Manchester Road, Stocksbridge, S36 1DY : 0114 288 7899Rev Ian Lucraft, 136 Wadsley Lane, Sheffield, S6 4EE ianlucraft@ : 0114 234 7153 : 07428 744 014 Website for Worship is : and on Facebook at @christchurchstocksbridge00Christ Church Stocksbridge LEP, Manchester Road, Stocksbridge, S36 1DY : 0114 288 7899Rev Ian Lucraft, 136 Wadsley Lane, Sheffield, S6 4EE ianlucraft@ : 0114 234 7153 : 07428 744 014 Website for Worship is : and on Facebook at @christchurchstocksbridge ................
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