Our responsibility from 19 July onwards. After looking at the newly available Government and church guidance, and in common with many others, we are resolved to be very cautious. We are asking those who attend church to continue to wear masks (unless exempt), hand sanitise on entry, and maintain social distancing. We will look in early August at whether we can sing a bit (possibly beginning on 8 August) and even resume leaving the church open through the day at some point.
David Root’s Funeral. This is at 1.00 p.m. on Tuesday 20 July, and is of great importance to us. We have done an informal risk assessment and would hope to be able to accommodate those who wish to come, but the family is sharing with others that we will not be able to admit people once we reach a safe capacity limit.
Open for worship. We continue to meet on Sunday at 11.00 a.m. (and at 9.30 a.m. at both St Gabriel’s, Stanbury and at St James’, Cross Roads, and mid-week Communion continues at 9.30 a.m. each Wednesday at St James’, Cross Roads). Morning Worship on 18 July will focus on the unexpected relevance of the first establishment of a Temple in Jerusalem. Holy Communion will be celebrated on 25 July. All Age Worship is on 1 August will include baking some bread. UPDATE Holy Communion will be celebrated on 8 August.
Open for tourists. We remain hugely grateful to the Friends’ of the Bronte Church for stewarding the opening of St Michael’s 12.00 noon to 3.30 p.m. on Tuesdays (but not 20 July when we have a large funeral at 1.00 p.m.), Wednesdays and Sundays. We are aware that the Bronte Parsonage Museum, after careful consideration, is also continuing to operate from 19 July as it was doing before 19 July. UPDATE Sorry – we haven’t been able to sustain this amount of staffed opening. We should be open on 1st, 3rd, 4th and 8th August, but probably not 10th and 11th.
Worship on-line. Our weekly videos have had to come to an end as we don’t have the capacity to produce them well at the moment, but many old ones are still available to view immediately below this post. West Lane Baptist Church and St Mary’s, Oxenhope are among churches live streaming their Sunday worship on their Facebook pages, and those who sample these are welcome to feed back to us if something like this might be useful from us as well. UPDATE The first experiments with live streaming services (mid-week Communion from St James’) now appear on our Facebook page.
