All church services are to be suspended until further notice but Hawton Church will be open on Thursday mornings between 10am and noon for quiet reflection and prayer. Access at other times can be made by contacting a keyholder.
Those
living in the neighbourhood will be aware that each hour between 9am and 8pm is rung at the church tower. This could be a reassuring sound at this time of crisis.
We have also just received this message from the Church of England
- an alternative form of worship to accommodate the need for social distancing:
During the coronavirus crisis please check our "Services and events" page for ways that we can worship while staying in our homes as required by the authorities.
All Saints' church is much more than the glorious medieval Ancaster and Blue Lias stone building that soars high above the surrounding fields and water-meadows. It's much more than its world-renowned carved stone Easter Sepulchre. It's much more than 7-800
years of history. It is a living, vibrant place of worship where one senses the presence of God, and of the thousands of saints who have worshipped here down the centuries, as soon as one enters the building. There is a deep peace about the place. It is a
place that our Celtic forebears might have described as "thin"; one where the boundary between earth and heaven seems to stretch almost to breaking point.
All Saints' church is all of those but it is much more, for the church is not just the building.
It is the people who gather for worship here today; people from the village and the surrounding area who come to express their faith in God - the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer - in word and in song; who come and are nourished in that faith by Word and Sacrament;
and who then go out to live out that faith by their words and deeds among their friends and neighbours, their work colleagues, the strangers that they meet in the street.
There is so much that the church in Hawton, both the building and the people,
has to offer you. In the words of Jesus, "Come and see." S. John chapter 1, verse 39.
Safeguarding
The parish of Hawton w Cotham is committed to the safeguarding of children, young people and adults. We follow the House of Bishops guidance and policies and have our own Parish Safeguarding Officer (PSO).
The Church of England is preparing to take the church into people’s homes – through TV screens, laptops, computers and mobile phones
– ahead of the first Sunday without public worship.
Hundreds of churches and cathedrals across the country are to live stream services without congregations, marking Mothering Sunday and a National Day of Prayer and Action tomorrow, which
is being observed by all major Christian denominations.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, will lead the Church of England’s first national virtual service tomorrow morning. It will be broadcast simultaneously at 8am on the 39 BBC
local radio stations in England and as BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Worship. It will then premier on Facebook
through the Church of England’s page at 9am.
Meanwhile the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu will be live streaming a short prayer time on his Facebook page at
10am, 12 noon, 4pm and 6pm on Sunday. The time of prayer will include the Lord’s Prayer and two Taizé Chants and will be around 10 minutes long.
The Church of England has also issued a special prayer for the National
Day of Prayer and Action. The text is below.
Across the country cathedrals, parish churches and non-traditional church gatherings are adapting to the challenges posed by the restrictions on public gatherings to help limit the spread of infection in
different ways.
The Bishop of Chelmsford, Stephen Cottrell, said: “The Church has never been a building, it has always been a people.
“We are about to discover what that means.
“From
this Sunday onward the Church will meet as usual, but it won’t be happening in our buildings.
“It will be happening in our hearts and in our homes.”