Christmas Update
On Saturday Evening the Prime Minister announced that London and the South East are to go into Tier 4 lockdown from Sunday morning. The reason for this urgent restriction is due to the development of a new strain of the Covid virus. According to the Prime Minister, “there is no evidence the variant causes more severe illness or higher mortality, but it does appear to be passed on significantly more easily.”
As a result of this, we have felt as an Eldership Team that in order to make sure that people are not exposed to the possibility of infection from this new strain of the virus, that we will no longer host our Christmas Carol services and Christmas Day service in person at our venue.
We are so sorry to have to do this after all the changes that have already happened over this past week. It has felt like a roller coaster of trying to keep the ship on course and making sure everyone is safe on board. Our staff and ministry teams have worked so hard in preparing to make it a special Christmas celebration for you but we hope that you will still be able to enjoy all that is planned through our live streamed meetings.
The Christmas Carol Service will be lived streamed at 4pm tomorrow and will be available on our Forest Town Church Youtube channel
We will also screen our Christmas Day Service on YouTube at 10am for you to enjoy from home. There will be no meeting on the 27 December. On the 3 January we will host a Zoom Prayer Time of Thanksgiving at 10 am to look back over this past year to God’s faithfulness and care at every turn and look forward with hope and joy in his continued goodness towards us.
We especially want to ask you to not to let your joy be robbed. We can still cherish the simplicity of Christmas which is about Jesus coming to be with us in our troubles and our lowest times too. Can we also ask that we each be mindful of those in our church family who may be alone now at Christmas. Maybe you could pop round and give them some Christmas cheer even if it is through the window.
Christmas will be different this year but we can make it different in a wonderful way that is about caring for others and cherishing the small things that make life precious. Thank you for your understanding and support in these challenging times.
This comes with much love to you,
Ant and Helen, Clive and Sandra, Ed and EnQin