ST PETER-IN-THE-FOREST, WALTHAMSTOW - COVID-19 ADJUSTMENTS - UPDATE #1

This is update #1 (17/03/20) regarding our response across the Parish of St Peter-in-the-Forest, Walthamstow, to the COVID-19 virus. Please check our Facebook and Twitter accounts @StPeterE17, and on our ‘St Peter-in-the-Forest E17’ YouTube channel, for latest updates, and for online ministry, going forward.



Our aim in issuing these updates is to reassure parishioners, stakeholders and the wider community that we are taking every step to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all of our neighbours.

We continue to follow the advice given by the Church of England nationally, and also locally from the Diocese of Chelmsford, and also from HM Government and Public Health England.

These updates will be issued as necessary with an update being issued at least weekly, on Mondays, until further notice.



Services / Ministries:


Until further notice, the regular Sunday Parish Eucharist will be suspended.  Similarly, all other gatherings for parish worship, prayer or study on our premises.

Subject to the availability of a minister, some ‘online ministry’ will be filmed (or audio-recorded)from our Peter Chapel or private homes, and made available through the internet.

Decisions about the shape of our shared worship and devotions during Holy Week and Easter will be made soon and will be updated here.



Peterhouse Church & Community Centre:


The Centre remains open for use, within the restrictions advised by HM Government.  Regular partners’ use of the building is, however, expected to follow that guidance, for the common good.

Small gatherings of people will continue to be permissible at the Centre, at the discretion of the Vicar and Parish Officer. Larger gatherings of people, in so far as they are directly administered by the Vicar and PCC - hall-based activities, such as private parties, for instance - will be suspended from the weekend commencing 21 March 2020, and until such time as official guidance advises their safe resumption.

We will continue to clean the Centre thoroughly and regularly, including raised levels of disinfection of surfaces upon which hands may be placed.

Public health notices are placed around the building, and all users are asked to abide by the best hygiene practice identified there.



Pastoral Care:


We remain deeply committed to caring for our community at this time of heightened anxiety and uncertainty, especially for the elderly, the isolated and the vulnerable.

We have a Pastoral Care Team who are willing and able to contact parishioners by telephone. To receive help in this way, please get in touch with us via the parish office (on 02085091811 (parish office) or 07871584997 (the Vicar's direct mobile phone) or via email on spitfe17@gmail.com)

Please note: we have been advised to be very careful as regards visiting in person to ensure that we do not spread the virus to people who might already be vulnerable.



Community Information:


Please do remember to check on the wellbeing of your neighbours and any people who are particularly vulnerable at this time, and please help us to do the same.



Financial Information:


We are encouraging all in our community to keep on giving at this time, as our parish income is already down yet our outgoings remain highly static.



Communications:


We will communicate to parishioners via our weekly parish social media channels (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) throughout the week, and through paper notices on our church doors and noticeboards.
We will communicate to major stakeholders in our Peterhouse Centre through our information management system, ChurchDesk - please check for notifications, regularly.



More information:


The Standing Committee and PCC of the parish will respond quickly and decisively to this rapidly changing situation.

You can find out more from the Government website, here.

And from the Church of England’s site,here.

In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to be in contact if you require further information.



Many thanks.  Go well,



Fr Paul Trathen
Vicar, St Peter-in-the-Forest, Walthamstow







Prayer:


Most importantly we, as people of faith, are called to pray for those who are ill and those who care for them; for those whose lives and livelihoods are affected, and for those whose work is to look for solutions, vaccines, and a way through this situation.

We are also called to have hope in the God who loves us, and not to live fearfully or selfishly.

Please pray fervently with us as we seek to serve and love our community, and one another, with wisdom, kindness and care.

A prayer about the Coronavirus outbreak:

Keep us, good Lord,

under the shadow of your mercy

in this time of uncertainty and distress.

Sustain and support the anxious and fearful,

and lift up all who are brought low;

that we may rejoice in your comfort

knowing that nothing can separate us from your love

in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

For those in isolation:

God of compassion,

be close to those who are ill, afraid or in isolation.

In their loneliness, be their consolation;

in their anxiety, be their hope;

in their darkness, be their light;

through him who suffered alone on the cross,

but reigns with you in glory,

Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For those who are ill:

Merciful God,

we entrust to your unfailing and tender care,

those who are ill or in pain,

knowing that whenever danger threatens

your everlasting arms are there to hold us safe.

Comfort and heal them,

and restore them to health and strength;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For hospital staff and medical researchers:

Gracious God,

give skill, sympathy and resilience

to all who are caring for the sick,

and your wisdom to those searching for a cure.

Strengthen them with your Spirit,

that through their work many will be restored to health;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A Prayer for when you can’t get to church:

Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your disciples, ‘I am with you always’.

Be with me today, as I offer myself to you.

Hear my prayers for others and for myself,

and keep me in your care.  Amen.

A prayer for the World:

God of love and hope,

You made the world and care for all creation.

But the world feels strange right now.

The news is full of stories about Coronavirus.

Many people are anxious because of it.

Many people are anxious that they might get ill.

Many people are anxious about their family and friends.

Be with them in their worries and help them to find some peace.

We pray for the doctors and nurses and scientists who are working to discover the right medicines to give hope to those who are ill.

Thank you that even in these strange and worrying times, you are with us.

Help us to look for the signs of your goodness and love towards us. Amen.

‘Loving your neighbour...and living apart from fear’...Sermon - COVID19, 15 March 2020

This morning, the Vicar departed from preaching on the regular set scripture, in order to help us respond in faith and love to the present, novel, Coronavirus COVID19
You can listen at  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FfLm7ystRw0kZOqMk9R8G9tUgwGHbsGd/view?usp=drivesdk

Pastoral letter - friendship during times of political contention

Dear friends,

I write as your parish priest, pastor...and friend.

I write in the week in which we may, finally, as a nation, see the United Kingdom leave the European Union; or not; or plan for a UK General Election....times of great political contention.  These have been our times, these last few years...

I write in the light of these particular times, but also in the light of the eternal gospel, the good news of God's love shown in Jesus Christ, and the victory over all evil won through His life, death and resurrection...

Friendship is the radical Christian witness our politics needs.

One possible area of unanimity to be found over Brexit is simply that it is a mess. I do not believe that anyone can be happy with where we find ourselves. How can the church most help? How can the church best model a different way of engaging, both with the issue of Brexit and with each other across the divides, in such a way that we are a faithful and healing witness to the nation?

I would say: friendship.

Jesus famously calls us friends, and I believe that there is something holy in the nature of Christian friendship which we are being called specifically to model at this time. A very good part of the recent letter from the Bishops of the Oxford Diocese stated: "There are leavers and remainers in every congregation, but this can never be our primary identity as Christians."

Which is to say that there are values and aims which Christians hold that transcend any particular political claims. Christians share with each other not simply doctrinal claims, such as "Jesus is Lord", but also an awareness that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that progress in human affairs is ultimately and wholly dependent on the grace of God.

These shared values are then embodied in particular virtues - and it is those virtues which (as the Church has classically understood, following Aristotle) enable a genuine friendship to take hold. The virtues that we need today include hospitality to alternative points of view, humility in a shared search for the truth that we insist it is possible to find, patience in recognising how long this process may take - and over all these we must put on love, to bind them together.

Why, though, do we in the church find it so challenging to model such virtues? How is that we find it so difficult to be distinctive salt and light in this time of worldly tumult?

To act in a gracious way, turning the other cheek to those who seem to hurt us and trample over things that we hold precious, requires us to draw on spiritual reserves. To model a different pattern of life, the way of the Spirit rather than the way of the enemy, requires sustained practice. It is not something that comes easy to our flesh, which clings so hard to the ease of worldliness. It is always easier to say 'I thank you Lord that I am not like this sinner'* than to say 'I repent in dust and ashes'.
Might it be that we in the church struggle to demonstrate a distinctive witness of friendship across the Leave/Remain divide because we have fallen out of the practice of friendship within our own church life? We have spent many decades arguing with each other over matters of church order and sexuality, and that has come at a cost. We have not always enabled 'good disagreement' and have instead allowed the fruits of bitterness, strife and resentment to plant seeds. Have we used up all our spiritual reserves in internal dispute, leaving us incapable of withstanding worldly pressures when it comes to engaging with critical political issues like Brexit?

Our most important task, now as always, is to immerse ourselves in prayer, seeking the still small voice amidst the earthquake, wind and fire of Brexit. Such prayer would have the effect of loosening the hold that our opinions have upon us, as we remember and laugh at our own frailties. With humility, and forgiveness for others as well as for ourselves, we might be in a better position to see the truth of where we are, and thus the way to where God wishes us to be.

It will also enable us to be better friends.

I am fond of Stanley Hauerwas' 'Modest Proposal for Peace': let the Christians of the world agree that they will not kill each other. In the same spirit, I suggest that we Christians agree that we will remain friends with those on the other side of political debate. We will seek the image of Christ in the face of our opponents; we will resolve to disagree gracefully, affirming that what we share is greater than what divides; we will repudiate a spirit of accusation in favour of a shared and humble recognition of mutual sinfulness. Above all, we will cling to an insistence that there is a truth here to be found, a truth which will set us free from this mess in which we have become embedded.

In doing so, I believe that we will be witnessing to our nation and our world that there is a better way for all human beings to follow. We will do justice to our faith, and to each other.

Let's be friends.

Go well,

Fr Paul

*I note that this line/attitude appears in the gospel reading set for the Eucharist, this week (Sunday 27 October, the Last Sunday after Trinity).  So, you may consider this letter, in part, as an extra sermon for the week ahead, too!


PS I am grateful, for much of this letter's inspiration, to Fr Sam Norton, a dear friend to me, over many years....