I hope you have had a good week and enjoyed the sunshine.
Please find below some of the things that have happened this week or that you might want to be involved in over the next 7 days:-
Please join us again this Sunday at 10am in our Emmanuel Family Facebook group where we will be sharing together in a time of worship live. This will be like the last few weeks, post after post in real time to follow a full service that takes around an hour. You can join us live or enjoy it later in the day – the choice is yours. We’ll be singing, praying, reflecting and listen to the message from Ben Scrivens. There’ll be activities too! Why not join us? Any problems finding the group please email us and we will be happy to help.
Have you checked out our Facebook pages? The Emmanuel Family now has 137 members, Emmanuel Methodist Church has 490 followers and Emmanuel Youth has 124 followers. There has been a lot going on again this week across all our Facebook pages and our post where we share publicly have reached over 1000 people!
For those not on Facebook, Joan Booth has reviewed Emmanuel’s social media activity this week, here’s her account: This week has seen a different way for celebrating Easter, many people accessing online or televised services. Emmanuel had a fantastic service of music, prayers reflection and readings. The cross we usually decorate inside our church was brought outside and people who were taking their daily activity stopped by to decorate it which was wonderful to see. People put up crosses in their windows and Christine Stamper made beautiful flowers out of egg boxes. The young people have been challenged to place a cookie on their forehead and then manoeuvre it into their mouth without using their hands which kept them entertained. We’ve seen some great videos of them attempting to do it! Kirstie also provided a keep fit challenge.
Attached are “Vine at Home Easter” & “Vine at Home 19 April 2020” – these are short order of services for the coming week.
A plea again from Caron our Treasurer - the recent decision to close and suspend all activities due Covid-19 at Emmanuel has had an immediate impact on our financial position. We have lost our rental income entirely which is so important to us and our collections will be much reduced. However although there will be savings on utilities we still have the ongoing cost of the circuit assessment which is £17908 per quarter. So it is more important than ever for all our members to continue their giving during this time. Due to the government restrictions it is not possible for me to collect any cash offertory from members. So can I ask members who do not currently give by standing order to arrange this with their bank – attached is a standing order form for this purpose.
· Attached is “Emmanuel Corona Prayers Week 5” – prayers for the week ahead.
Thank you to those who have volunteered to reach out our church members who are not on social media. If you have a neighbour or someone nearby either Emmanuel members or not, you could always print off this letter and our other resources including and pop it through their door to keep them connected and know that you care.
This week we have started our birthday card delivery service to many of our members who are not on social media or do not have an email address. Does anyone you know have a birthday, an anniversary or any good news you want to share with the Emmanuel Family – why not post it on the above Facebook pages (please remember the Emmanuel Methodist Church Facebook and Emmanuel Youth Facebook are public page so only share what you want to share, and the Emmanuel Family Facebook page is more private and only viewed by our members).
Please remember again the local Foodbanks this week whilst you are doing your weekly shop - Emmanuel Church have teamed up with the Tesco’s (just down from Church) to help support our local Foodbank. If you shop at this Tesco (or anywhere where they are collecting) please put something in the trolley for people who rely on this service and put in what you can.
Please feel free to forward this email (and any of our future emails) so we can all support and help each other at this stressful and anxious time.
As an end to the newsletter this week, please see below some of the pictures posted on our Facebook pages for the Cross Challenge – can you guess what everyone was doing this week?
Many thanks
The Leadership Team