Easter Sunday We welcome you to join us for our Easter celebrations streamed live at facebook.com/stmartininthefields:
• Easter Sunday 5.30-6.30am Easter Vigil and First Eucharist of Easter.
• Easter Sunday 10.00-11.00am Eucharist
Revd Harry Ching will also be leading a service for our Chinese Congregations, 1.30-2.30pm on Easter Sunday. This will be streamed to a Zoom group; details will be posted on the Facebook group page.
Great Sacred Music. The weekly online Great Sacred Music series podcast is available at soundcloud.com/greatsacredmusic/. The next in the series will be released on Thursday 16 April.
Clergy contact. We recognise that many of us will face extreme circumstances over the next few weeks and months. In situations of bereavement or emergencies relating to physical or mental health, a member of the clergy can be contacted by texting 07910 652573 or 07761 661529; one of the clergy team will call you back.
Congregational giving. Following the closure of the business on 17 March St Martin-in-the-Fields Ltd (SMITFL) overnight lost almost all its income and the PCC is now wholly reliant on congregational giving and donations for its funding. You can give to the worshipping and congregational life of the church online here:
www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/life-st-martins/congregational-giving/.
Theology Group will meet via Zoom, 6pm on Sunday 19 April. For the link to join the meeting, please email sian.conway@smitf.org or keep an eye on the Facebook group.
Media and Wider Ministry
This Sunday, Easter Day, you can hear archive recordings of the Choir and Congregation of St Martin’s, and St Martin’s Voices, in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter Service, produced by Andrew Earis and recorded (virtually) in his kitchen at Lambeth Palace. You can watch the service on Easter Sunday at 9am on the Church of England website (www.churchofengland.org/more/media-centre/church-online) or listen to BBC Radio 4 at 8.10am.
Richard Carter presented the BBC Radio 4 Daily Service Meditation for Maundy Thursday, on Serving, Offering and Waiting. You can listen back here:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h6db.
Richard Carter and Neil MacGregor took part in the Good Friday Meditation on BBC Radio 4, produced by Andrew Earis. You can listen back here:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h267.
Richard Carter and Sally Hitchiner will be leading next week’s Church of England’s services of online Prayer during the Day for each day of Easter week. Listen here from Sunday onwards: https://soundcloud.com/user-600495787.
Prayer for when we’re supposed to be happy
God of today and forever, at Easter you show us love is stronger than death. Inscribe in our lives glimpses of resurrection; bring to the weary heart strains of zestful rejuvenation; breathe into dry bones the limbering pulse of new beginning. Teach us the discipline of joy, that even when all around us seems dishevelled and discouraged, your Spirit may lift our hearts as yeast enlivens dough. In sure and certain hope that, whatever happens, you will be with us always; through Christ your son our risen Lord. Amen
