Holy Trinity are live-streaming a Sunday service at 10am each Sunday via YouTube and providing a weekly service sheet for people to follow along with at home, or use on its own if they want. This is updated regularly with suggested prayer points, children’s activities and a playlist. Click here for details.
Daily Encouragement Blogspot
They are also producing a daily encouragement each day (except Sunday), getting different people to write each week. You can find it at holytrinityrichmond.blogspot.com and you can sign up for that via email on there too.
Call To Prayer
They are also encouraging the church to pray at various points during the week: 7.30am on Tuesdays, midday on Wednesdays and 6pm on Thursdays. Reminders are sent out about this via Facebook and Twitter.
Just before the lockdown, St Mary Barnes had fortunately started photographing the church scrapbooks which go back more than 40 years. The scrapbooks were started in 1978 with the fire that devastated the church building. The books, which have been carefully compiled by members of the church, document the story from the aftermath of the fire, through it’s rebuilding to the present day.
To help deal with this period of being unable to come into church, they are going to feature some photos from one year per week at a time, on the History & Architecture page on the website and on social media.
St Mary the Virgin, Mortlake has been awarded the ECO Church bronze award. Well done to St Mary’s for demonstrating that “gospel is good news for God’s earth”.
One by product of social distancing and staying at home is the use of Zoom by churches throughout the country. We have all become experts in video-conferencing and are enjoying meeting regularly even though we can’t be together physically. There are Zoom prayers, Bible studies, House Groups, Junior Church, after church coffee and more.
Here’s a few of the pictures from congregations and clergy across the deanery.
Pet blessing service at St Mary, Barnes
St Luke’s and St Philip and All Saints get together to celebrate St Philip and All Saints patronal festivalVirtual coffee at St Michael and All Angels , BarnesRegular Friday coffee morning at St Richard’s, HamDeanery Chapter meetingSt Luke’s choir regular get-togetherThursday Home Group at St Richard’s, HamConfirmation class at St Michael and All Angels, BarnesDeanery Synod 3rd June
Palm crosses inside St Luke’s, Kew waiting to be collected when the congregation returns to Church, a stripped altar for Maundy Thursday and the Easter altar with the Easter waiting to be lit whenthe Church opens it doors again.
Palm crosses inside the Barn Church, Kew waiting to be collected when the congregation returns to Church
Easter Sunday at St Michael and All Angels, BarnesAs usual the St Mary Barnes was stripped bare on Maundy Thursday as it becomes like a tomb for Jesus on Good Friday. It has a peaceful atmosphere of simplicity. This year they will hold back the Easter candle and furnishings until all can come back to worship in church in due course. Revd James lit the Easter bonfire in the Rectory garden celebrating the resurrection and the start of Easter.
Palm Crosses on Palm Sunday; Easter Garden outside the Church from Good Friday; Fire lit in the vicarage garden, for the Easter Vigil
The usual Christian Aid house-to-house collections and events such as Big Brekkies cannot happen this year.
Instead, Christian Aid Week gone online as it is still a vital way of supporting the poorest of communities worldwide, who are also at great risk from the pandemic.
6:30pm, Monday 11th May – Revd James Hutchings will host the quiz, in support of Christian Aid, and hopes you will join him to participate on Facebook live.
Rev David Cooke looks to the words of St Paul in his letter to Timothy when he says “even though I am chained like a criminal, the Word of God is not chained” (2 Timothy 2:9). Even though we may feel like we are in prison and we are not allowed out the truth is the Word of God is not chained.
Holy Trinity Barnes is streaming two live services each and running Bible teaching via Zoom.
Visit htbarnes.org at 10am and 6pm on Sundays or click here if you miss the service.Email steven@htbarnes.org for meeting codes. If you aren’t able to join live on Thursday nights the previous weeks recordings are uploaded on htbarnes.org to listen at your leisure.
The winter night shelters are now open until April 2020. In the Richmond Circuit the following churches will be hosting one night each week:
Sundays at St Marys, Ferry Road,Teddington Mondays at St Elizabeths, The Vineyard, Richmond Tuesdays at Vineyard Life Church, The Vineyard, Richmond Wednesdays at All Saints, East Sheen Avenue, East Sheen Thursdays at St John the Divine, Kew Road, Richmond Fridays at Christ Church, Christ Church Road, East Sheen Saturdays at St Matthias, Friars Stile Road, Richmond
St Michael and All Angels will host one night of the Hammersmith circuit. (A circuit is a group of 7 churches – close together in distance – who open their doors, on the same night every week, from October – April, each year offering the homeless a hot meal and a bed for the night.)
Please prayer for the men and women who will stay at the
shelters and for the the volunteers and caseworkers that will help the guests
to better lives.
If you would like to volunteer, please contact Megan Preston
(megan@glassdoor.org.uk). For
enquiries about donations and anything financial, please contact Ian Foster (ian@glassdoor.org.uk).
If you are concerned about someone over the age of 18 that you have seen sleeping rough, you can send an alert via StreetLink who connect people sleeping rough with the local services that can support them.
The Glass Door team at St John the Divine who opened their doors on 7th November
Our first evening of the new night shelter season with Glass Door. Delicious butternut squash soup, lasagne, red cabbage and peas, lots of donated fresh bread, chocolate crispy cakes made by a local school and cakes made by one of our church families.
We welcomed 20 guests in from the cold, for a hot healthy meal and somewhere safe to sleep. Case workers are on hand to support the guests in their next steps.
Thank you all for showing God’s love in action
All Saints and Christ Church, East Sheen thank Waitrose for their generous contribution towards the costs of the Glass Door night shelters.
On Sunday 2nd February, St Mary Magdalene reported:
After the first 60 days of this Glass Door Homeless Charity season, 422 men and 88 women have been helped with a hot meal and a bed for the night – a 20% increase thanks to a 5th circuit.
Since June 2018 caseworkers have worked with 950 individuals and helped 114 into housing and 38 into employment.
Would you be able to provide any of the following for our Glass Door guests (travel size particularly wanted): deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrushes, face wipes, body wipes, sanitary towels, tampons, lip balm, hand cream, anti-bac gel. Please pop into the baskets at the back of St John’s or St Matthias or them into the Parish Office, Ormond Road. Thank you.
Waitrose have kindly donated oranges which have been made into delicious Marmalade, which went on sale at church this morning with profits going to Glass Door.
Updates from 23 March 2020
Vineyard Community Centre:
We are pleased to say that the government’s initiative to temporarily home rough sleepers in hotels has been initiated in Richmond and that the higher health risk of the Glassdoor winter nightshelter has now closed.
With others, we will continue to support the needs of this group with food and essentials as they now also have the possibility of staying indoors.
Our borough foodbank service continues and is very likely to increase in demand. We are in touch with our local authority to see how vulnerable groups can best be supported.
Glass Door:
Shelter guests now all moved to hotels! (Apart from a few guests in the Kensington and Chelsea circuit) Glass Door shelters shut so all guests and volunteers can safely go into self-isolation.
At our January 2020 Synod we agreed to give £2,000 to Glass Door to support the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons of their work in Richmond churches and their letter of thanks is below.
We are sorry to say that our Area Dean, Father Peter Hart, is starting a new job as Team Rector in the South East Worcester Team Ministry. Easter Sunday will be his last Sunday as Area Dean. Christ Church, East Sheen has summed up all our feelings in saying “We all owe Father Peter a huge debt of gratitude for his support, ministry, abilities and sense of humour”.
Our Archdeacon, The Venerable John Kiddle, writes “We shall miss Peter immensely, wonderful ministry in Kew, as Area Dean of Richmond and Barnes, and as Ecumenical Adviser. Our loss is the Diocese of Worcester’s gain”
The first of the Lent Lectures with a theme of ‘Let justice flow like water’ focusing on peace, justice & reconciliation we hear a talk on ‘Prison, a path to restoration and reconciliation?’ by Revd Tim Clapton, Chaplain at Wandsworth Prison.Click above for details of the Richmond Team Ministry Lent ProgramClick above for details of the St Michael and All Angels Lent Program
St John the Divine held a Lent Lunch on Sunday 1st March , including bread made by Junior Church and soup made by the 20’s and 30’s group, with proceeds going to the Bishop’s Lent Appeal
praying together, learning together, working together
They are also encouraging the church to pray at various points during the week: 7.30am on Tuesdays, midday on Wednesdays and 6pm on Thursdays. Reminders are sent out about this via Facebook and Twitter.
