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A message from our Rector on 4 January:
When the ministry team was meeting virtually this morning, we discussed our concerns about the increasing rates of Covid infection.
* When we first reopened our churches for services, there were very few cases in the vicinity. Our best memory is that it was between 50 and 150 per 100k in the Cherwell area, but on 28th December this had risen to 493 cases per 100k.
* As far as we understand it, it is not yet known why the new variant of the virus is more infectious, so whilst we have good procedures in place, we do not know if these are good enough.
* Most of the members of our congregations and indeed our ministry team fall into more vulnerable groups by virtue of age and / or health concerns.
* We do not yet know the impact that gatherings over Christmas will have had on infection rates, there continues to be uncertainty over whether schools will remain open over the next few weeks, and the Prime Minister is saying that measures may have to become stricter.
The advice from the Diocese at this time is that ‘whilst it remains permissible for churches to continue to be open for their usual worship provision, we are encouraging parishes/benefices in the Diocese of Oxford to take a very cautious approach in the weeks ahead’ and the other Benefices in our Deanery are all currently opting for online services for the next few weeks.
Given these concerns, we have reluctantly decided that for the rest of January:
1. We will suspend the service pattern published on the back of January’s magazine and return to live streaming a service of Holy Communion at 10 am each Sunday. In order to avoid the worst of the streaming problems that we have had of late, these will be live streamed from Finmere.
2. We will keep our church buildings closed.
We will review the situation at the end of the month, and obviously our plan is to return to services in person as soon as we sensibly can.
We will continue with live streamed reflections on weekdays (at 5 pm until Thursday 7th January, when these will return to 12 noon), to offer Zoom coffee morning on Tuesdays at 10.45 am and a Zoom quiz on Wednesdays at 1.30 pm.
We know that this will be upsetting and disappointing news for a good number of you, but with the roll out of the vaccines imminent, it seems negligent to take unnecessary risks at this stage.
With continuing prayers,
Alice
Thank you to Alice and Flora and anyone else who enabled the Christmas Day service to be held in the church. It was very welcome.
