Hi all,

Further to my last email, additional guidance for Churches has been published which you can read online by clicking here. 

We have taken the difficult decision to cancel our Friday morning Coffee Shop until further notice. There also won’t be any tea or coffee served on a Sunday morning either, and we're currently looking at other areas of our ministry.

The Pamper evening in Church that many were looking forward to has also been cancelled. We will make sure any who purchased tickets are refunded.

What's key is that for now, we are continuing to worship on a Sunday morning, and smaller groups will continue.

As a general rule, if you are preparing tea and coffee in your home, that is fine.
But if on the other hand it’s being prepared where multiple people are preparing and serving it, such as in Church, then this is not ok.

At times like this, it’s easy to get caught up in a sense of fear over not being in control. We can do a couple of things to mitigate that. Firstly, we should ‘control the controllable’. For example, we can all wash our hands regularly, and we can all follow guidance over isolation. But there are things that we can’t control, and we leave the rest to those in leadership who are charged with making these decisions, and of course, to God.

Which leads my second point: Don’t forget to pray about this.
Someone said to me today that 50 years ago, there would have been a national day of prayer for this pandemic. Well, why don’t we make it a Calverley month of prayer, praying from our corner for the nation as a whole?

There will also be people who still feel quite isolated and lonely at this time.
Without taking undue risks, you may still be able to visit or make regular phone calls to check how people are doing. I think this is a really key thing that we can do as a Church. If you are worried about someone, it would be helpful if you could let me know about them please, so I can follow up.

God has this in hand, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Finally, there are still some interesting events happening soon.
On Saturday 28th March from 9:30am till 12:30pm, Gordon Dey will be doing a special morning on Jesus in Galilee at St. John the Baptist's Church in Halifax.
It’ll be really good if you’d like to go and look at Jesus in his local context.

Blessings,
Phil