Emerging from Lockdown

Peter —  August 12, 2020

It has been a few weeks since we posted any sort of update on here.  In these weeks the UK has emerged from lockdown in some respects and we certainly feel more free than we did a while back.  To start with we were able to be outdoors for more time each day, and then more shops opened.  The first enjoyable step was probably being able to meet in groups of six for Life Group – thankfully the weather has been mostly perfect for the past months so this has worked out well for us (actually even the torrential rain week was fun!)

Our church has not been able to meet in our normal venue as the school is not renting facilities yet.  But for the past three weeks we have met at a village hall.  Sadly we are restricted to 30 people, socially distanced, with no singing, and now also with face masks.  Hopefully the singing rule will change soon because that really is a central part of church experience for people.  It has been nice to be meeting up, even if over half of the church still has to join online each week.

Please pray for us to figure out how to do church in the changing circumstances, but also how to do outreach and how to be a welcoming community when our numbers are limited and people have to sign up in advance to attend.  We are also aware that another lockdown may come in the next months, which would be disappointing.  At least we know how to do church online now – back in March we had to figure it out before the next Sunday arrived!

Speaking of adjustments, Peter has been doing a lot of work to launch Cor Deo Online which has gone really well so far.  The online gatherings have seen groups of roughly 20-40 people joining each week.  To access the online gatherings or the recordings you would need to sign up to the Cor Deo mailing list (click here to do that), or you can click below to see some of the public content that is now online from Cor Deo Online!