NWL Deanery

Holy Trinity Ashby is part of the Flagstaff Family of Churches and in the North West Leicestershire Deanery. This deanery is roughly the same, on a map, as the area serviced by North West Leicestershire District Council.

The vicars (clergy) got together this week for an extra-ordinary chapter meeting where we reviewed how we are approaching various aspects of the Covid-19 crisis as the Church of England.

I thought you might value knowing some of what has changed.

Weddings and Baptisms

As you will have heard (or guessed) weddings and baptisms cannot go ahead while we are all following the instruction to 'Stay at Home'. Emergency baptisms, where any Christian can baptised someone in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, can still go ahead where it is likely that someone is about to die and wants to be baptised.

Funerals

Funerals are still going ahead with only immediate family (and even then only a maximum of ten mourners present) at either the crematorium or graveside. Throughout, social distancing practices need be in place.

The Church of England has suspended charges for ministers taking funeral services during the crisis and the Diocese of Leicester has undertaken to pay licensed ministers out of diocesan funds. This applies to ministers who are retired and others who do not receive a stipend who take funerals.

Your Deanery Chapter has also worked on gathering all the information needed to keep providing funerals, however the crisis develops.

Worship

While we met (using Zoom) we also shared the different ways we've been providing Sunday Worship. You can find some notes on these at our deanery website: nwldeanery.org.uk

Please do pray for the clergy of our deanery in this time, especially our Team Rector Mary Gregory and our (new) Area Dean, Gill Pinnington.