Weekly Newsletter - 2 October 2020
Dear friends
I hope that you have
had a good week.
So, here we are
in October and autumn is well and truly in the air. The pandemic continues to
limit what we can and cannot do in church and so harvest this year won’t be
celebrated in the way that you’ve been used to in the past. Sadly, our schools can’t
visit church this year although the good news is that I have been invited to
begin leading Collective Worship again at Settle Primary. All three harvest
festivals will be family services, the first of which is on Sunday at Holy
Ascension and will be streamed live on to Facebook. All food donations this
year will go to Skipton foodbank.
October is the
month when a Dedication Festival may be held. Not to be confused with
the Patronal Festival, it provides an opportunity once a year (either the first
or last week of Oct) to give thanks for the bricks and mortar of the church
building and its role in the community. We always stress that the church is the
people and not the building, which is absolutely right, however, there is no
denying that our buildings are sacred places, beacons of God’s love and are
close to the hearts of those who are drawn to them. Again, we are restricted in
how we can celebrate a dedication service and so, we will be using relevant
readings at St Alkelda’s on this Sunday and at Holy Ascension on 25th
October.
Normally all
three of our churches use the same pew sheet but this week, because of the
different services, we find ourselves with different readings… which mean
different pew sheets. So, the readings in this newsletter are taken from the dedication
service that will be used at St Alkelda’s.
I’ve been giving
a lot of thought to the newsletters and have decided that rather than prepare a
newsletter and a pew sheet, I will amalgamate the two. This is something that
will evolve over the next few weeks. It also means that my weekly letter will
go to the people ‘in the pew’ too. The ‘Vicar’s Blog’ that accompanies the
Newsletter contains the sermon from the past Sunday and by the time you receive
it, it is always several days ‘out of date’. So, I’ve been thinking that it
might work better if we move the day that the Newsletter is delivered to you. I
will start to produce it for Sunday rather than Friday and your ‘deliverer’
will collect if from church. It may even mean that you are there to collect
your own?
Due to the
uncertainty of the pandemic and possible future lockdown rules, I will
continue, for now, to produce the newsletters weekly. This may reduce to once a
month when the time is right. Your feedback is important, so please do let me
know what you think.
You remain in my
thoughts and prayers.
