Our weekly, midweek service of Holy Communion in St Paul’s at 11am on a Wednesday resumes this week. All are very welcome to take this opportunity of in-church worship after a lockdown of almost five months.

St Paul’s will open again for in-church worship at three services tomorrow for the Seventh Sunday after Easter, at 8.15am, 10.30am and 7pm. All services will be celebrations of Holy Communion, something that has not happened in St Paul’s since December 23rd, which was the last service before the latest lockdown. Capacity is limited to 50 so people are being asked to consider going to the early morning or evening service, instead of the 10.30am one, which will be livestreamed as normal for those unable to attend.

Thank-you to all who took part in or supported the virtual Walk to Kisiizi Hospital that we held recently to raise funds for the Surgeon and Physio assistant’s salaries at Kisiizi Hospital, Uganda. 
 We had a great response to this event and to date have raised €10,829. Our online payment system (see Donate button above, option 3) remains open for donations and you can also drop contributions into the Rectory at 1 Silchester Road, or into the Kisiizi fund-raising box at the rear of the church when it re-opens on May 16th.
 In terms of our distance, we collectively managed almost 4,500km by walking, swimming, and cycling, so that leaves us somewhere in the middle of Algeria! 
Thank-you again.

 St Paul’s Kisiizi Surgeon’s Fund-Raising Committee

A full schedule of three Sunday services, at 8.15am, 10.30am and 7pm, will resume in St Paul’s from May 16th, with capacity restricted to 50 at a time under continuing Government guidelines to keep everybody safe. The midweek service of 11am Holy Communion will resume on Wednesday, May 19th. We will continue to livestream the 10.30am service on Sundays.

Parishioners are undertaking a virtual fundraising journey of 9,470km to Kisiizi Hospital in southwest Uganda. They are walking, cycling or swimming as many kilometres as they can until Sunday, April 25th and inviting family and friends to sponsor them.

We hope to raise the €15,000 we need to maintain our commitment to pay the salaries of the surgeon and physio assistant at the hospital. Contributions can be made through the online donations system on our website home page.

The institutional church sometimes seems to be preoccupied with ticking the boxes of things “you can’t do”. But Jesus was all about waking up people to the abundance of life, reflects the Rector in “Enjoy Life!”, the last of his “Facing the Future” series for Lent. https://youtu.be/AiBwU22tioo

In the penultimate part of the Rector’s Lenten series of Midweek Messages, entitled “Facing the Future”, he reflects on the “untidy emotions” that surround the one certainty in all our lives: death. Indeed, for some, anticipation of it can blight the present.  “Facing Death” can be watched on the parish YouTube channel here 

In “Worrying about Religion”, the fourth of the Rector’s “Facing the Future” series  for Lent, he reflects on the healthy and unhealthy nature of religion in our world. As the receptacle for our faith, religion is vulnerable to human folly. However, observing the drift away from the church in our “must-fit-me-precisely culture”, he reminds us of the core Christian message about “the triumph of love in every facet of life”. It can be watched here

“Living in an Online World” is the third of the Rector’s “Facing the Future” series of Midweek Messages for Lent and can be watched here

Climate change is the focus of the Rector’s second Midweek Message, entitled “Loving the Planet” in his “Facing the Future” series for Lent 2021 here