THE BRIDGE August 2021 Issue No 279 60p The Benefice of Lostwithiel Parishes Services for August 2021 Sunday,1 [Trinity 9] Boconnoc Matins (BCP) 11.00am Bradoc Evensong 6.00pm St Bartholomew Family Eucharist 11.00am St Brevita, Lanlivery Morning Prayer 9.30am St Veep BCP Holy Communion 9.30am St Winnow Parish Eucharist 11.00am Sunday, 8[Trinity 10] Boconnoc Holy Communion (BCP) 9.30am Bradoc Feast Eucharist 11.15am St Bartholomew Eucharist 11.00am St Brevita, Lanlivery Eucharist 9.30am St Veep To the Benefice St Winnow Outdoor Church 3.00pm Sunday,15 [Blessed Virgin Mary] Boconnoc Matins 11.00am Bradoc Evensong 6.00pm St Bartholomew Morning Prayer 11.00am St Brevita, Lanlivery Morning Prayer 9.30am St Veep Family Service 11.00am St Winnow Family Eucharist 11.00am Sunday, 22 [Trinity 12] Boconnoc Matins 11.00am Bradoc Eucharist 11.15am St Bartholomew Eucharist 11.00am St Brevita, Lanlivery Eucharist 9.30am St Veep To the Benefice St Winnow To Bradoc St Nectan Evensong (BCP) 6.30pm Sunday,29 [Trinity 13] St Veep United Benefice Service 10.30am Regular Weekday Services Wednesdays - St Brevita - Evening Prayer at 5:15pm Thursdays - St Bartholomew - Celtic Eucharist at 10:00am Third Friday of each month- Church Rooms-Messy Church-4-6 pm Vestry Hour Revd Paul is available in the vestry at St Bartholomew’s Church on Tuesday mornings from 09:30am to 10:30am to discuss any issues that you might have. This is on the assumption that regulations have been eased to allow this. Lanlivery, St Bartholomew's, St Veep, and St Winnow Church are open every day Revd Paul Beynon (Rector) - Tel No: 07896 841802 Revd Sheila Bawden( Associate Priest)-01208 871344 From the Registers-August 2021 Baptisms. We welcome into God's family St Bartholomew Reuben Crago Richards Lanlivery Finley Jon Rundle Weddings. We pray for God's blessing on St Bartholomew Sarah Yeo & Richard Barker Boconnoc Alicia Marshall & Ryan Mc Cartney Boconnoc Olivia Roper & Luke Hendrie RIP We pray for God's love and peace on Eileen Morse - William Crago - Patricia Mary Dunstan Crarey Year's mind for August: Hazel Yvonne Pearce - Bill Doe - Sylvia Mary Campbell - Joan Sanders - Michael Frank Harbord - Tim Reed - Sheila Chapman-Mortimer - Robert Stanley Dack - Marjorie Emma Darby - Doreen Gladys Barrington - Jean Iris Wellington - Jean Margaret Spooner - James Warnes - Gary Shaw St Nectan Evensongs Throughout the summer on the fourth Sunday of each month until the end of September there will be Book of Common Prayer Evensong sung at St Nectan’s Chapel at 6.30pm. This is a quiet and reflective end of day service held in the peaceful countryside at the heart of the benefice. Although the Covid restrictions have been lifted St Nectan’s space is limited so we shall ensure that the door is open for ventilation and personal spacing is respected. If you wish to attend the Rector and I would appreciate an email (preferably) on [email protected] or phone call to 873458 so that seating risk may be thoughtfully managed. Thanks. The next two Evensongs are on Sunday 22nd August and the 26th September ( Harvest). Canon John Halkes Adrian George, St Nectan’s Warden From the Rector’s desk, Billy Graham once famously said ‘Many churches have moulded their programmes around the community-not the word of God’ I sort of understand what Mr Graham was getting at, even though I disagree with his assumption that this is necessarily a bad thing! Recently I’ve been thinking about the place our churches occupy within the affections of our communities, how our communities relate to our buildings, and what exactly it is that the church is there for! Church goers all across the nation are acutely aware that they are unlikely to have to queue to get into their church or worry about getting a seat on Sunday mornings! According to Anglican. Ink, there has been a 2.1% decrease in attendance at Church of England services, meaning there can be a little over 850,000 people in church on any given Sunday! But I wonder if the figures tell the whole story of the relationship between the church and community? I think it would be a mistake to assume that just because the majority of people don’t attend a church that they don’t necessarily care about it – either as an institutional presence or iconic building in their local community. There is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that communities will treasure their local parish church, value its history and aesthetic beauty and charm, and even support it generously when the cracks start to appear! Furthermore, historically communities have become aggrieved and incensed when anything happens to threaten the existence and presence of the parish church in the locale. And yet there remains a chasm between what communities say and practically do for the church, and their registered attendance at corporate worship services! We are fortunate in our benefice to have communities who value and cherish the local church and are active in their support of it when the chips are down. I think it would be a mistake to underestimate just how important our churches are to their communities, as evidenced by the generous support that is given when we need it! Billy Graham implicitly criticised the church for misplacing its priority by caring too much about the community. It was said about one church, ‘they really wrap their arms around people, not just their members, but the entire community. We want to be part of that’ This might be something for all of us to work towards, and the answer to those empty pews! Your Friend Revd Paul Hold Tight! A reflection for August 2021 by Canon John Perhaps the heading should be ‘Hold your Horses’. I had a sad phone call this week (in early July) to tell me that an old ex RAF chum from the sixties had died. Colin had gone back home to South Africa after his service flying had ended. He and his wife, both in their eighties and living in a wealthy sheltered retirement village near Johannesburg, had visited a friend in the village for coffee and the next day they were told that she had tested positive for Covid. Both of my friends got the virus and fell ill; Colin died and Ilva is still suffering. The irony of choosing a secure, gated and protected community to live in only to fall victim to a virus did not escape me. It was a sobering message at the time that our government just announced a lifting of legal precautions as the Covid Delta variant took off. I looked back at my Bridge reflection for August last year and it reminds me that the Covid precautions were being lifted in time for Summer. We all remember what happened in the Autumn and Winter that followed. By Christmas we were back on high alert. During the spike in infections in January over 1,500 people per week died and February was almost as dreadful. I wrote then about the ‘common good’ and how we might love our neighbour as ourselves by accepting the vaccine but continuing to respect the virus Now we enter another summer and another variant with yet another wearying spike in infections. The difference this time is that most of us adults have been vaccinated so we stand a better chance of not dying if we catch the disease. But then I think of Colin and Ilva who thought that they were secure. The virus has made us all think again about risk. Our brilliant health care teams, who are frantically struggling to catch up with the backlog of life inhibiting operations, need to be kept in mind too. One foreign holiday might well close a whole ward. Our demand for liberty=good, against legal restrictions=bad, raises a false choice. A Professor of Behavioural Science wrote last week about how he obeyed the legal requirements of the Highway Code because his personal liberty to drive fast might be at the expense of his neighbour’s liberty to have life. So while the Government has passed responsibility for coping with the ongoing pandemic to each of us, I can’t help but feel that a legally backed ‘Covid Code’ underpinning our behaviour might have been more responsible. Personal responsibility is not the same thing as personal choice remarked the Christian commentator Paul Vallely. I shall continue to wear a mask in shops and supermarkets, on trains and enclosed spaces, including those churches which have no doors or windows open. I’ll give night clubs a miss altogether. My old Mum used to say, ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater’. In the rush to regain ‘freedom’ we might well have done just that. So hold tight! It might turn out that the baying for freedom may not further the common good. I hope I’m wrong. I wrote about all of us finding a new way to move into the future economy, finding a sustainable future and not falling back on the old mantras of growth and consumerism. Well, a year on there is not much evidence that the government has grasped that nettle. Their ‘green’ initiatives and promises to ‘build back greener’ are still just that - promises. Their policies to tackle Climate change have yet to be fleshed out; the lack of detail and funding is worrying and at the November COP-26 the UK will be seen to be lacking in global leadership: a tired old emperor without any clothes. For now it seems as if keeping EasyJet solvent, getting our holidays in the sun and opening night clubs even takes precedence in parliament.