With the new lockdown now in place in England, there are restrictions on how worship can take place. Basically, we cannot hold our normal services inside our church buildings and most are reluctant to hold entire services outside due to the complexity of ensuring (= policing) social distancing, particularly if there are large numbers of people involved. For example, Mattishall normally has about a couple of hundred people involved in the first part of the service on the village green, finishing off the service inside All Saints. Mattishall Parish Council had cancelled the outside part of the service because of the problems involved in social distancing and how that would detract from the atmosphere of a respectful act of remembrance.
Before the new lockdown was announced last weekend the benefice staff team had organised local services, but on Monday afternoon started organizing a suitable Zoom service. Just after we finished the organisation, the Prime Minister announced that outside services could be held under certain stringent, documented conditions. With the problems with outside services under lockdown mentioned above we decided to proceed with the Zoom service this Remembrance Sunday as planned (apart from a short service totally outside at Yaxham, which had been the original plan there anyway).
This Sunday's Zoom Remembrance Service will include the reading of the names from all our benefice parishes who fell and thus the timing of the service is a bit more complicated than usual. We are still working out at what time we will start the service, but will let you know soon.
So, please do join us for our Remembrance Service on Zoom on Sunday and invite those you know who would normally come to Remembrance Services in our church buildings. The Zoom connection details are the usual details for each Sunday, but I have put them below anyway.
When the time of the start of the service is known we will put it on this website and email those on our distribution lists. If you are not on our distribution lists and only receive weekly email updates from this website, please check this website.
For those who join us on Sunday, please do join the Zoom meeting in plenty of time so we can try to avoid having to let people in during the actual service itself. The Zoom meeting will be open to join at least 15 minutes before the start of the service itself.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83401400096?pwd=REJTTmlPUHlveHhSbmhBQURucHJnZz09
Meeting ID: 834 0140 0096
Password: 858873
One tap mobile
+442034815237,,83401400096#,,1#,858873# United Kingdom
Dial by your location
+44 203 481 5237 United Kingdom
Meeting ID: 834 0140 0096
Password: 858873
Hope to see you on Sunday.
Alan Cossey
Back to top of page