Update From St. James Church

Update from St James Church

As many of you know St James Church has been closed since March due to Covid 19. We now have permission to reopen if, at a local level, we feel it is safe and feasible to do so.

Funerals with a maximum of 20 people are allowed in church since 29th June prior to burial and we have put various safety measures in place including maintaining 2m social distancing.

We are also opening the gates so people can access the grounds once again.

We are now considering how 'normal' services might resume. We are asking our congregation what needs to be in place for them to feel safe and happy to return, and adding those to the strict guidelines with which we must comply.

Since March we have been joining together with the Methodist church, Wybunbury and Doddington churches to worship on Zoom every Sunday at 10.30am. If you would like to join us, send an email to audwybdod@gmail.com and we will send out a service sheet and joining instructions.

We could now also open for 'private prayer' but we are not doing so at the moment. Why not? Because if we did so we'd have to:

• Have a rota of people on duty in church throughout the time it is open
• Ask you to sanitise your hands at the entrance
• Advise you to wear protective gloves and a face mask
• Ask if you have any Covid symptoms and ideally ask for your contact details
• Tell you where you could sit and warn you not to sing
• Then clean and sanitise each surface you touch.

As a church community we really want to reopen all day every day as we did before, but that is not possible at present. What we are going to do is open on Saturday morning 10-12 from 1st August for private prayer and see if this is helpful for people. As an alternative if you can't wait until 1st August or Saturday does not suit, you can:

Sit in an armchair at home with a cup of tea, or wander by the canal or over the fields watching the birds...and talk to God just as easily.

It's not essential that we have special words or a special place to talk to God. He loves us and he's listening, so just give it a go.