The church leadership – both Standing Committee and PCC – have agreed that, from Tuesday 12th January 2021, we will be temporarily suspending public worship at St Martin’s. This will be reviewed after Sunday 24th January.
The government and Church of England’s advice remains that places of worship can remain open during lockdown and we are confident that St Martin’s remains a “Covid-secure” space. However, there are several factors that have led to this decision for our church:
- Local Covid infection rates have more than doubled in the last week.
- We want to play our part in encouraging all of our community to stay at home and prevent further spread through interaction with others outside our households.
- We have kept in close contact with other local churches and we all feel this is a consistent approach to help protect our communities in the forthcoming weeks.
However, this does not mean that the church is closed! We are as busy as ever, and continue to work on providing all our usual services and community work remotely, wherever possible.
Our regular services and meetings will all be held online, as follows:
- Sunday 11am All Age Worship – livestreamed on Facebook and uploaded to YouTube afterwards
- Y+C Sundays – a Zoom session for children and young people, held at 10.15am before the main All Age Worship livestream. Contact stmartins.childrenandfamily@gmail.com for the meeting details.
- Wednesday 10am Worship – livestreamed on Facebook and uploaded to YouTube afterwards
- Life Stories (a new series of interviews with church family) on Wednesdays at 7.30pm – livestreamed on Facebook and uploaded to YouTube afterwards
- Ignite Children’s group – 4.15pm every Thursday on Zoom for children of primary school age. Contact stmartins.childrenandfamily@gmail.com
- Friday Night Takeaway – a new Zoom meeting for young people between 11 and 18 years old at 7.30pm on Fridays. Contact stmartinsyouthwork@gmail.com for the meeting details.
- Saturday morning prayer meeting – on Zoom. Please contact revabbyrhodes@gmail.com for the meeting details.
We are working to ensure we keep contact with those who do not have access to the internet as well and hope that we will be able to return to opening for public worship very soon.
We continue to pray for God’s protection and for a speedy delivery of the vaccine programme!
Rev Matt Taylor & Rev Abby Rhodes
Having stuck to one Sunday service since reopening for public worship in July, our PCC have now confirmed that we will return to a two-service Sunday morning! So from Sunday 13th September, we will be re-introducing our 9am service, ahead of our 11am All-Age worship, ensuring that both services are Covid-secure.
Following the annonucement that public worship could take place from this weekend, there has been a flurry of activity at St Martin’s as we’ve been busy getting everything ready for our first church service back in our building at 11am on Sunday 5th July. 
