September at St Paul’s: a new season

It’s September, summer’s over (even though the temperatures are rising again!) and we’re getting back to school and work again after holidays. It’s also a new season at St Paul Old Ford, where our various groups and activities are getting going again after the summer break. And some things are returning to ‘normal’ (whatever that is these days) for the first time since before the pandemic started last year.

This is also our last month in our vacancy, without a vicar. But more on that later.

We’ve complied a list of upcoming things that are happening at St Paul’s this month, including some slight changes to our arrangements for COVID.

Sunday services

Our Sunday services continue to happen at 10:30am every week, as usual. The only slight difference for this month is that we’re returning most of the pews to the pre-COVID configuration. This will help us to have more people in services, but we will still have a section of socially distanced seats available for anyone who’s worried about being too close to other people. This will be near the side door (which will be kept open for ventilation), beside the organ.

We will continue to ask people to book before coming to the service, wear masks (especially when singing) and to sanitise.

Bible study groups

Our Bible study groups are fully back again. These are all on Wednesdays and are:

• lunchtime in church at 12:30pm
• evening in church at 7:30pm
• Bible in the pub at The Eleanor Arms at 8pm

If you want more information about these groups, please email hello@stpauloldford.com

Death cafe

We’re having our first death café since before the pandemic on Tuesday 14 September, from 2 to 3:30pm. You can read more about how we do death cafes at St Paul’s in our post about a previous event. The main difference with this upcoming one is that it’s the first in-person death café since before the pandemic began last year. So people will be able to see each other face to face in an actual café, and eat some actual cake!

If you want to attend, please get in touch with Rev April.

Memory café

We’re having our first memory café on Wednesday 22 September and there we’ll be aiming to hold one every week from then. It will start at 2:30pm and run to 4pm.

The memory café is for people with memory loss and who are isolated. Carers and relatives are also welcome to attend. The death café will include refreshments, music, singing, crafts and brain games. There will be more information on the memory café in an upcoming website post nearer the time.

Youth work

The Sunday youth group will start again this coming Sunday (12 September) and will happen during the 10:30am service as usual.

The youth Bible study starts again this week and will be on every Tuesday at 4pm in the church café.

The other exciting news is that Rise – our Monday evening youth club – is coming back soon, on 20 September at 7pm. There will be more info coming up about this, so keep a look out on our social media, particularly our Instagram.

The youth work team will also be starting its girls club at a local secondary school this month.

For all information about youth work at St Paul’s, please contact Jessica.

Children’s work

Our Sunday school (for primary age children) and under-5s group will be starting again this coming Sunday, 12 September. The under-5s group return date is still to be confirmed, but he hope it will be soon. We’ll let you know.

This will be the first time these groups have returned since before the pandemic began, and we’re really looking forward to having the children’s groups up and running again.

One of the issues with restarting these (apart from COVID-related ones) has been having enough volunteers to run the groups. We still need people to help out the both the under-5s group and the Sunday school, so if you would like to help, please get in touch with Jessica.

The church café

We’ve now had the new kitchen installed, and Christine, our café supervisor, is getting the place organised and ready for the café reopening later this month. We’ll let you know when we have a date for reopening.

Into October

On 3 October, we have a blessing of the animals service. Yes, really! More information on that to come, but it’s happening at 4pm that day.

The big October news is that the evening of the 7th sees the licensing service for our new vicar Darius. There will be a big demand on places for this service, so we’re not advertising it widely, but it does mark this official start as the vicar of St Paul Old Ford.

Because many people from our congregation won’t be able to attend the licensing service, we will be having the following Sunday – 10 October – as the proper welcome service to Darius and his family at St Paul’s. But again, more information on this to come nearer the time.