To the Beloved in Christ of the Parishes of St Mary’s and Church of the Good Shepherd Amanzimtoti.
We praise God that we are now able to have physical gatherings once again. In this difficult time there are times when I need to unilaterally make decisions to address the emerging reality of our lives together, so in consultation with the team that is helping to put the services together we have decided that until further notice we will alternate between St Mary’s and Good Shepherd for Sunday Services. This will mean 14 days between the use of the venue which should reduce the infection risk in the church.
Until the numbers exceed 40, the safe number to have in each church building, we will continue with combined services. We also need to bring new Lay Ministers on board to assist with leading these services. These lay ministers will lead from, and on Zoom or at the Church.
This week we will worship at St Mary’s at 09h00 and again, having resolved some of the challenges, combine with the ZOOM and WHATSAPP services. Again, I stress that bringing the community and holding the community together is the priority. We could have multiple services instead of the one combined, but that is not the approach that I feel would be best for us at this point.
Please send your names in and the number from your family that will be attending, it is essential that we plan for the numbers, especially as we are expecting to see increased numbers coming to physical services. However, I still encourage you to attend ZOOM or WHATSAPP if you can.
Remember that your feedback helps us to improve the services and so is welcome.
This last month we focused on the Season of Creation and I am grateful to Dr Revd. Rachel Mash and her provincial team that put the Season of Creation Resources together. I am also very grateful to Vanda Chittenden who collated the evening prayer series. We all benefited greatly from that; and for that, and her tireless work in keeping the Website and Facebook pages up to date and doing the daily posting, we are truly grateful.
May God bless you abundantly today and always.
Choose faith!
Rector.
