Celebrate Saint Alban’s Day in style with a special service on Sunday
Our Midweek Catch Up – this week featuring an interview with business owner and PCC member Karl Fenwick
St Helen’s Church Building is OPEN again!
Mid-week Catch Up with Azalea Volunteer Vicky Puttock
We are just starting to understand the wide-ranging implications that Covid-19 and the resulting Lockdown has had on our society.
For all our Charity Partners Lockdown has brought unique challenges. This week, for our Mid-Week Catch Up, we are checking in our most local Partner, Azalea in Luton.
Azalea works to support the women caught in the sex-trade in Luton, and found themselves in the frontline of support for some of the most vulnerable people in the town during Lockdown. Vicky Puttock, of the 9.30 Congregation, volunteers with Azalea and Claire caught up with her this week, to find out more about how the charity has been faring and what Vicky’s role has been in these last few, challenging, months.
We are planning an online Messy church service for the weekend of July 4th/5th and would like to include 2 songs, Shine and My Lighthouse with lots of people doing actions (you don’t have to sing as we will use the audio from the Youtube video)
It would be great to include a really wide range of people from ALL OUR CONGREGATIONS!!! Please record yourself, your children or grandchildren doing the actions for one of the videos, Simply email Linda on 58linda.thomas@gmail.com for instruction videos and a link to upload your efforts.
Messy Church Online – your chance to Shine!
The building is open and it’s back to normal, right?
It’s good to have the St Helen’s church building back open for Private Prayer from 10am to 5pm. And we’re pleased that the government has announced we can resume church services from 4th July. It is clear however that this permission doesn’t mean we will be back to services as normal! For a start, we will need to maintain social distance in the church which seriously limits our capacity! Secondly there will be no singing, and we’re not sure what the implications are for sharing refreshments after the service – never mind whether we’d be allowed to celebrate the Eucharist. Even if we were to resume services immediately we know that lots of you are still ‘shielding’ and would be reluctant to be part of a large gathering.
So please pray for the team as we carefully considering these constraints and work out what will be possible and when. The one thing we do know is that we will be continuing with our Online Sunday Services for the foreseeable future even when we do resume worship in our church building!
In the meantime we would love to hear from you if you’d like to share your thoughts about our worship in the future.With love and prayers – Richard
Home schooling has it’s challenges for all parents (and teachers – see above!) but it’s particularly hard if you don’t have access to the internet via a PC – or have to share that computer with parents working from home and your siblings. Do you have an old laptop or tablet you’re no longer using ( ideally with the power cable)? This could be wiped of all your data, refurbished and given to a local family to use. Suitable laptops / tablets can be dropped off with Laurie and Margaret Barker at 24 Lattimore Road.
Got an old laptop? Or do you need one for home schooling?
UPDATE: Thank you to all of you who have already dropped old computers off – keep them coming!
Alternatively, do you know a local family with children who need an extra laptop to help with home schooling? the James Marshall Foundation has provided 40 new and refurbished computers to local families in the past few months. Please pass on their details to anyone you know who would benefit: office@jamesmarshallfoundation.co.uk
Do join us for our ‘Distant Socialising’ on Sunday at 11am or Wednesday from 10:30am using the links below as we gather together using the video conferencing platform Zoom.
Click on the Meeting ID and password to join either session.
