St George's congregation has been asked:
To respect one another
To pray for all those who are infected or worried by the virus.
Services and practical help
Services:
“The Archbishops of Canterbury and York are calling for Church of England churches to put public worship on hold and become a “different sort of church” in the coming months to face the challenge of coronavirus”.
With this in mind, and with a heavy heart, we are now suspending acts of public worship at St George’s Church. By doing this we aim to help in the prevention of the spread of coronavirus and to protect member of our congregation especially the elderly and vulnerable.
As Archbishop Justin said, we would hope that people will say their prayers at home in a similar way to saying them together with other members of the congregation when they come together in a church building.
We do not, however, want to leave people with spiritual support and sustenance. We hope to provide this in three ways:
The online services which you can find on our webpages: https://www.stgeorgesbrighton.com/sevice-videos
The interactive services which we will be hosting on Sundays, and the interactive coffee morning both of which you will be invited to join via this web site or by giving us your e-mail address. They will be hosted on Zoom.com. Open a free account and on Sunday we will place a room identity and pass code here.
Also we have launches our prayer blog: https://www.stgeorgesbrighton.com/prayer-blog
This will let the clergy and fellow members of our congregation that we need prayers.
The prayer life of your clergy will continue, and we will have you all in mind. From time to time we will also try and contact you – just to have a chat and make sure you are not feeling too low.
Practical help which you can offer:
We are being encouraged to help each other where possible over the next few weeks.
It is clear that:
Some people will be asked to self-isolate even if they do not have either the coronavirus or symptoms.
Several of the more helpful organisations will be lacking in staff because their usual volunteers are over 70.
So how can we help?
Please consider one of the following:
The phone cascade - would you be willing to chat with someone for a few minutes or longer every week? It could just cheer up a long and dull day, or ease some of their worries. Making sure people know we care.
An hour to run errands - if you are doing your shopping for instance, then you might collect a few things for a member of the congregation and drop them off.
So far, we have two people volunteered for the phone cascade - but these are very early days.
Alex, our cleaner, has volunteered to help Gean and Brenda with shopping - he lives nearby and will help-out at least once a week.
If you want information, or would like to volunteer contact Fr Andrew Revmanson-brailsford@hotmail.co.uk
with thanks in advance
Fr Andrew
