The Anglican Parish Church of St Aidan, Skelmanthorpe welcomes you.

Revd Kate Currie

Priest-in-Charge Skelmanthorpe & Associate Priest High Hoyland, Scissett & Clayton West

revkcurrie@icloud.com

07949850460 

Revd Mrs Evelyne Barrow

Associate Priest High Hoyland, Scissett, Clayton West & Skelmanthorpe

revebarrow@gmail.com
07814 236051 

Revd Dr Sarah Farrimond

Rector of High Hoyland, Scissett & Clayton West

revsarahfarrimond@yahoo.co.uk  

01484 900025

Worship this Sunday from home

Palm Sunday

Rev. Kate Currie will  be celebrating the Eucharist in her own home on Sunday April 5th  at 10am

You are warmly invited to join in spiritual communion and fellowship. The service booklet can be opened to read or print off using the drop down list under 'Services' at the top of the page. Select the item Service for Holy Communion.

Pastoral Letter  April 3rd 2020

Dear Friends,

This letter comes to you as we begin to prepare for Palm Sunday and Holy Week. This is the third of what will be regular letters that I will write while ordinary activities have been suspended.

We have become ‘a different sort of church’ in ways we couldn’t have imagined several weeks ago. While worship in our churches is suspended, our joy in the resurrection is not to be silenced and to this end the Church of England is producing a wide variety of resources, with very clear guidance to help us continue to pray and worship. There is a section about Spiritual Communion and prayers to take us through Holy Week with Stations of the Cross as just one example.  All to be found here:

https://www.churchofengland.org

Within the parish too prayer and worship is taking place. We continue to pray for one another and for the wider world and simply to seek God. I will be conducting a service of Holy Communion in my own home at 10am every Sunday morning for as long as we are unable to meet in church. Please phone or email Evelyne or myself with things that you would especially like us to pray for. You should have received an order of service that you can follow at home, please let me know if you have not received one and would like a copy.  The order of service is also on the church website:

https://www.staidanschurch-skelmanthorpe.org

I have updated the service booklet for Palm Sunday with a few verses from one of the Bible readings and a hymn for the day as well. Please read (and maybe sing) along in your homes. If in the future you would like more of this: the full Bible readings, or all of the words of the hymns, let me know and I will see what I can do.

In addition to this I will be praying every day at the following times and it is comforting to know that others are also joining me, at home at these times.

9am  Morning Prayer

5pm  Evening Prayer

7pm  Lighting a candle in my window.

I use the Church of England Morning and Evening Prayer. You can find the full services on the Church of England website or if you have a smart phone or tablet (IPad or Android equivalent) by downloading the Church of England Daily Prayer App, but there is of course no obligation to use the same form of prayer that I do: what matters is that we pray not how.

With this in mind I include with this letter some resources that are less structured than those services, but which you might find helpful: prayers for use when a service of Holy Communion is taking place, prayers for use at morning, evening or night time.

While we can’t presently meet together, please join us at a distance and pray at the same time, in these or any other way that is helpful. It has been very good to know that when I have been praying at home, you have been praying with me. I will keep in touch by phone – but don’t wait for me to ring you: please ring me whenever you feel you need a chat. I remember you in my prayers. Please pray for me too. God is with us in this too.

Every blessing,

Kate

PS from Bishop Nick

I am recording a piece to camera for each day from Palm Sunday, and these will go up on the diocesan website. Each will last no longer than two or three minutes.

https://leeds.anglican.org

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Churchwardens

Mr Trevor Langley 

Email: trevor_langley@hotmail.co.uk   Telephone 01484 864249

Mrs Carole Senior

Email: csenior46@yahoo.co.uk   Telephone 07949 613231

Leeds Diocesan Environmental Policy passed by Diocesan Synod 16.03.2019  has been adopted at our church.

Church of England, Safeguarding Policy Statement, Promoting a Safer Church, House of Bishops, 2017 has been adopted at our church, contact details are given below.

Safeguarding

We take this issue really seriously and our policies, approved by the Diocese and the Church of England, are designed to underpin this. 

St Aidan's Safeguarding Officer: Gill Millman tel.  01484 862683 or 07519 272210

Diocese Safeguarding Adviser: Jenny Price tel.  0113 3530 258 or 07800 740001

Any concerns about the safety of a child, or Adult, should be refered to Kirklees Safeguarding Team.

Child daytime 01484 456848 Out of hours  01484 414933

Adult daytime  01484 221000  Out of hours 01484 414933

We are part of the Deanery of Kirkburton and Almondbury, in the Huddersfield Episcopal Area (The Rt Revd Dr Jonathan Gibbs, Bishop of Huddersfield), in the Anglican Diocese of Leeds (The Rt Revd Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds).

We are only a small middle-of-the-road village Church. There's nothing grand or special about us, but we would love to see you if you would like to visit us.  We usually meet at 10.00am. On the first Sunday of the month we have 10.00 am Traditional Holy Communion service (based upon the 1662 Book of Common Prayer) followed at 11.00am with Contemporary Informal worship. You might wish to know that the altar-bread used in our Church is gluten-free

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE

Let us pray together

Each Sunday at 11 am we are going to ring our church bell for about 10 minues.

Together with the members of our own congregation and those from the Methodist Church the prayer bell will remind us to quietly pray in our own homes for the world, our nation, our village community and for those known to us personally who are in difficulty at this testing time; and also to give thanks for those who work for the good of us all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has suggested that it may be helpful to use the words from Psalm 23 The Lord is my Shepherd - the only important point is that we pray as a community and it doesn't matter which words we use.

We therefore invite you to join with us, so that we can flood our village with a wave of Christian prayer

Lent Course, The Charity Shop, Messy Church, Mums and Toddlers, Junior Singing and Drama, Coffee mornings and Mothers Union are suspended.  

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Our Mission Statement.....

We exist to worship God in holiness and adoration.

We proclaim that God totally and utterly loves every creature in the universe, no matter whom or what they are, both in this life and in the life to come.

We intend that this fact should be proclaimed by compassionate action: for, and with, the neighbour in our community; for our neighbour in distant places; and for all the other creatures we share this planet with.

We want to help and share in the delight, and the struggle, of local folk in their pilgrimage/journey of life - to enable and encourage people to cope and to try and live life to the full.