Month: June 2020

#stayconnected: Intercessions shared during Evening Prayer on 6 June

Posted on by Dorothee Möller

These are the intercessions we prayed during last week’s Zoom Evening Prayer:

Please join me in prayer for the church and for the world, for our community and people close to us.

The response to ‘Lord, in your mercy’ is ‘Hear our prayer’.

Lord, we thank you for bringing us together once more on this Saturday evening – allowing us to be together even though we still have to be physically apart. We think of those from our community who cannot join us in this form. Help us to find different ways to reach out to them and show them that they have a community to rely on. We especially pray for those who have to stay at home due to sickness or because they have to care for a sick loved one. Lord, comfort them and support them in these difficult times.

Lord, in your mercy

Hear our prayer

We also continue to pray for everyone affected by the ongoing pandemic. Whether they suffer from the virus themselves, have lost loves ones to it or are on the front line as healthcare professionals. Whether they fear for their existence due to the economic crisis or risk their health every day by working in essential industries that keep our society running. We also pray for everyone working hard every day on finding a cure or a vaccine. We ask you to watch over them and their loved ones.

Lord, in your mercy

Hear our prayer

Lord, during this time we also think particularly of people around the world suffering from and fighting institutional racism and prosecution and living in fear of it every day. And while current events in the United States are in our focus now and it would be easy to look at this as something happening far away from us, always help us to remember that there are still too many people suffering from this worldwide, including within our own city. Lord, help the ones among us who are lucky enough to not know what is feels like to face xenophobia and racial persecution in our own country to open our hearts and really listen to those who have, so we can understand what they are going through. Give us the words to speak up in support of them, and guide us and also leaders and people in power across the world to forge a better society for all your children.

Lord, in your mercy

Hear our prayer

Finally, we ask you to guide our church in the process of finding our new chaplain. We pray for everyone directly involved in this process – please empower them to help us find the person who is truly called by you to fill this position here in Hamburg.

Lord, in your mercy

Hear our prayer

Then participants were invited to share their own prayers if they wished to do so.

When will the church reopen?

Posted on by Dorothee Möller

Dear Friends,

We hope you are all healthy and managing to survive the current crisis. We also hope you are continuing to enjoy the virtual services Fr Pete has been preparing for us every week, and which he will continue to prepare for as long as we need him. We are very grateful to him for this and for the always imaginative, interesting and uplifting services.

You must be wondering when and how the English Church will open again and so we’d like to bring you up to date. At the Church Council meeting on 3 June a motion was passed to postpone the reopening of the Church for at least another two weeks, as it is not clear how things will develop after the long weekend and lifted restrictions. We need to wait until the statistics on the reinfection rate for Northern Germany are available, as keeping the congregation safe is our top priority.

If the rate remains the same or lower than it is now, we would consider opening the church for Morning Prayer at the end of June for small numbers of people, and following the regulations of the City of Hamburg, the Nordkirche and the Anglican Church. When we reopen, we will naturally observe these hygiene regulations strictly. We will keep you informed and the website will be updated regularly.

The locum who was due to come to Hamburg at the beginning of June will not be able to come as a result of the crisis, but the locum expected in mid-July, Rev Nick Fisher, is planning to come if all is well. The church will certainly be open again then, but obviously only for small, controlled groups. Full Eucharist services will not be possible for some time.

In the meantime, please keep watching Fr Pete’s services here.

The services are also available via Facebook.

 If you know of anybody who is not online and would like to know what the church is planning, please let us know their name, address and telephone number and we’ll contact them.

Please let us know if you need anything or have any suggestions or ideas. Email to:

covid@anglican-church-hamburg.de

All the best and stay well,

The wardens and the Church Council