COMMENT / The Rt Revd Libby Lane, Bishop of Stockport on Towards a Safer Church: resources for prayer and reflection in worship

Churches offering services from the Book of Common Prayer are seeing unprecedented engagement with hundreds choosing to ‘tune in’ to more traditional offerings. 

Following a recent announcement that places of worship could reopen for individual private prayer from June 15, the Government has now revised the date in guidance just published to June 13.

Since the government announced that public worship in churches could restart after more than three months of lockdown, churches have been taking innovative steps to help keep their congregations as safe as possible:

The Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, chair of the Church of England’s Recovery Group, has released a statement on individual prayer in churches.

A prayer ahead of Racial Justice Sunday this week written by Revd Dr Anderson Jeremiah, a member of the Archbishops’ Anti-Racism Taskforce.

The churches of St Peter’s and St Philip’s in Highfields and Evington in Leicester began livestreaming services on Facebook and YouTube from the start of the first lockdown last year.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has launched a free national phone line as a simple new way to bring worship and prayer into people’s homes.

An online Community of Prayer is to be launched after a cathedral saw digital worship numbers soar after Covid-19 restrictions came into force.

Places of worship will reopen for public worship from 2nd December