The Wey Forward March - May 2021

Walton - on - Thames At Walton, we have been exploring different ways of worship. With the help of one of the younger members of our Church family, we have started live streaming some of our services. This required the purchase of some specialist equipment. However, the live - streamed services can be saved as YouTube clips and as such, they are now on our website. The first one of these was with Claire and Mark Hargreaves who were in the church. It was lovely to have them back even though we were only seeing them on screen and Claire’s message is still there. So, some good creative things have come from our time in lockdown.

We were having Communion on the first Sunday of the month; the church was open for prayer on Thursday afternoons. We started to plan for Christmas, with the promise that we would have Christmas and that restrictions would be lifted. We made plans to have services in the church and unfortunately this was not to be. In the week before Christmas there was a flurry of activity as we worked hard to adapt to changes coming from Government and the MC, and we managed to change Christingle to streamed and Zoom, Christmas day was streamed with a few people allowed to be in the church.

At the start of Advent, we had a Zoom Messy Church for our younger members. The craft activities were sent round to the families to make before the Zoom. Julia Monaghan led the session, and during this she asked, what would you do if Mary and Joseph came to your house? So “ Las Posadas ” was set up. Las Posadas in Spanish is translated as “lodging or accommodation”, and in this case, it refers to the inn that Mary and Joseph arrived at.

Mary, Joseph, and the Donkey were packed into a little box and would visit various homes in the weeks before Christmas. (All carefully sanitised and delivered at a social distance!) Pictures were taken, stories were told and shared around our community by WhatsApp so we could all follow the adventures that they had. At the Christingle Mary, Joseph and the Donkey arrived back at the Church to watch their adventures. If you go to our YouTube channel you can see our Christingle service here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=ct_Vbg7vHgM&t=3s

The streamed service that was most watched in December was our Carol service. A lot of planning went into this and the reading, singing and prayers were all from members of the church family – all carefully and brilliantly edited together by Christopher Heffernan who skilled himself up on what was necessary to produce the final service. The link is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r - NADpqixG8&t=347s

In January we did not have our covenant service. We decided to wait until we would be able to meet in the church, make the covenant and have communion together at the same time. So, we had a live stream with Rev Sydney Samuel Lake unpacking the meaning behind covenant for us.

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