Author: MarkSanderson

Will things get better? Will things get worse? We have no answers, but we can be grateful that we have survived so far.

Please join us for our harvest weekend events.

Saturday 10th October

10am – 5pm The church will be open with prayers hourly and displays representing groups from around the community. Come say a prayer, light a candle, or spend some time thanking God during this harvest season.

7pm – Virtual Harvest Supper

Prepare a meal at home that reminds you of harvest and then join us on Zoom to eat and drink together as we give thanks for good health and prosperity.

Sunday 11th October

9:30 St. Mary’s Harvest Eucharist

A harvest service packed with favourite harvest hymns. Join us in church or watch online at rossparishes.uk/digital-services

6:00 – Choral Evensong

This will be the fist service our choir has sung live since March. Come and join us for this conclusion to our harvest celebration.

A special request to all traders and shopkeepers

Harvest nowadays is not just about flowers, fruit and vegetables though there will be plenty of those in church. We want to celebrate all the fruits of the labour in the workplace: manufacturing, retailing, insuring, advising, training and volunteering. Please help us to display this by lending us something to put on show; or take a photograph of your establishment so that our visitors can see that Ross-on-Wye is very much surviving, is “open for business” and is thankful.

This Sunday Walford is celebrating their Harvest Festival at 11 am while in Ross there is the usual live streamed Eucharist at 9.30. Come along to church or watch live on Facebook.

At noon, Tiffany our curate will be ordained Deacon in Hereford Cathedral. You can’t attend in person but the service will be live streamed on the Diocesan Facebook page and we’ll be screening it live in St Mary’s at 12 should you want to come along and feel a bit more a part of the service. Or if you prefer something a bit quieter there’s an 8 am said service at St Mary’s.

Our 9.30 am Eucharist at St Mary’s on Sunday 4th October will be presided over by the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, Bishop of Hereford. This will be Bishop Richard’s first official physical visit to our parishes (though he’s made a couple of virtual appearances during lockdown).

This will be the only service in our three churches on this day and our Covid-19 policy means there is a limit of 50 on seats for members of the congregation.

Please book a place here to be assured a place if you wish to come to the service.

You have choice of three Communion services on Sunday, one in each of our churches: 9.30 am at Ross and Walford and 11.15 in Brampton Abbotts Church.

We have removed the need to prebook a place for the service at St Mary’s, Ross. Numbers attending the service in person are well within what is possible with very good social distancing in place. We will ask you to make yourself known when you arrive for the purposes of Test and Trace. This service will continue to be live streamed via Facebook if you prefer to take part from home.

We look forward to seeing you, in person or online, at one of our services.

Full details of all services will be found at https://rossparishes.uk

The 8th September is the day the Church commemorates the birth of St Mary. St Mary is our patron saint in Ross and we have traditionally kept this day as our patronal festival.

Here is a recording of a hymn for St Mary that the choir made at our first rehearsal on Friday, to be streamed in Sunday’s service. If you tried to watch that, sorry it didn’t quite happen, we are not sure what went wrong!

Happy birthday!

Sean writes …

Someone asked me this week whether the pandemic had killed the vision that we have for our parishes. Under the circumstances a fair question, but let us remember firstly that this vision was not just the product of wishful thinking. It was something that was prayerfully and corporately discerned, and thus a vision given to us by a God who knew the future, and gave us a vision for what these churches can be in a post-pandemic era. There is no doubt that our communities need even more faith, hope and love now than they did in January 2020 when we had our Vision Day! Read more …

Thank you to everyone who completed our recent survey on our Online Worship provision and to Derek Glover who has crunched the numbers and analysed the results.

A few headlines: we have had nearly 70 responses and only two thirds of these considered themselves regular “church-goers” before March. Nearly 60% of the people responding are accessing services online at least weekly. 80% accessed services easily in the main. 74% have said they prefer live stream and/or prerecorded services as a digital offering (these are the main formats we’ve used). More than 80% of respondents said they would wish to continue some form of digital worship in a post Covid world.

These results are encouraging and seem to suggest we are providing what people want. We are indeed proud of the provision we’ve made at St Mary’s and of the speed at which we’ve reacted to an ever changing situation. We strive to continue to do that. We are also conscious that we need to continue to support the few with no access to technology, develop further our forms of service so that they meet both physical and online needs, and contribute to our mission of inspiring faith, hope and love.

Derek’s full survey report is available below.

Have you been missing Toast in real life? Have you recently had a baby and are looking for a group to join? Whilst we cannot yet meet in our usual indoor format at St Mary’s we are starting a buggy walk from the bandstand every other Wednesday. Our first one will be Wednesday 2nd September at 9.15 am.

You are welcome to come along but will need to book a free place using the Eventbrite link below. We will then link you with a small group to walk together rain or shine.

The electoral rolls of the three parishes are being revised ahead of the Annual Parochial Church Meetings.

In the case of St Mary’s, Ross, the APCM is on Wednesday 7th October at 7 pm via Zoom. The revision of the electoral roll needs to be completed before then. If you’d like to be added please use the online form as soon as possible.

Members of Brampton Abbotts PCC would like to express their very grateful thanks to the village Cake Club and their spouses for turning out in force to help with the churchyard maintenance.  

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Since lockdown, the Probationary Service, who normally come every other week from April to October, have been unable to assist.  Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the Cake Clubbers, we now have mown grass, widened paths and unearthed graves.  What resembled an overgrown meadow has been transformed.

Thank you also to Simon Leney who has been disposing of the mountains of rubbish for us.  We are so grateful for all this invaluable help and can’t thank everybody enough for this communal effort.

Rosemary Knapp – Church Warden

Join us online at 8 pm for sung Compline from St Mary’s Church, Ross-on-Wye in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The perfect night cap!

This morning’s service from St Mary’s was accidentally streamed to the wrong Facebook page. Well done to those who made it to the choir page (or Walford Church) and found us!

If you want to catch up it’s now on our website and St Mary’s Facebook page too: https://rossparishes.uk/digital-services

Today we have added our dear friend, Ann Purvis to our Ross Remembers website. Ann died in July, she was a a much valued friend and active contributor to the life of our church and town and we all miss her.

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Here’s a quick view of what’s going on this week.

Monday to Saturday @ 9am – Morning Prayer – Zoom
Tuesday 11th @ 9 – 12 am – Community Larder – St Mary’s Hall
Wednesday 12th @ 10 am – Toast – Zoom
Thursday 13th @ 11 am – Thursday prayer group – Zoom

SUNDAY 16th AUGUST – The Blessed Virgin Mary
8 am – Said Communion – St Mary’s
9.30 am – Sung Eucharist – St Mary’s and Facebook Live
11 am – Virtual Coffee – Zoom (note later time)
11.15 am – Parish Eucharist – Brampton Abbotts Church
3.30 pm – Picnic Church – St Mary’s
8 pm – Sung Compline – prerecorded

There is a choice of services today in The Ross Parishes.

9.30 – Live Streamed Eucharist from St Mary’s

11.00 – Live Family Service via Zoom (Walford)

3.30 – Popup Picnic Service at St Mary’s

Whether live, in person, or later on “catch-up” today or during the week; we look forward to welcoming you to our churches.

We’re carrying out a bit of an audit of our online worship offering and would love to hear from you if you’ve joined us for a service, or part of a service, any time over the last few months; or even if you haven’t and have thoughts to share.

Please take a minute or so to answer a few questions.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSej09LhmnfFYqloIjsS2D7E-GuTT2JXpb8HV6sXMykafcNFaA/viewform?usp=sf_link

Here’s an additional treat to follow on from yesterday’s service, from Elaine Loe, Centre Manager for the Wye Valley branch of Christians Against Poverty.

If you missed the service yesterday the live stream is here.

And details of what’s happening in The Ross Parishes accessible from the home page of our website: https://rossparishes.uk

If you’d like to come along to our ever evolving service on Sunday at St Mary’s at 9.30 am, bookings are now live.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/service-for-the-week-beginning-2nd-august-tickets-115030870430?aff=efbevent&fbclid=IwAR2iGGIoUv9eRNVRANY5J34Hw0HdE3GKWpTf6_kNidcWHFX_kDv2eYQrFzQ

If not you may like to drop in on the live stream at home. https://rossparishes.uk/digital-services

We look forward to seeing you in either place.