Corona Virus Update and What’s Coming Up

We cannot wait to welcome you to Skylark Church on the 27th June. Following the announcement on the 14th June, we have had to make some changes to our planned roadmap when it comes to Sunday gatherings. Please take a few minutes to check out the video below to get a better idea of how Skylark Church will look over the next couple of months.

For those of you who like to know a few headlines before you watch, here are the key points:

• The full launch of “The Gathering” without restrictions and with all the components we had hoped and planned for will be delayed until the start of September. However, we are taking incremental steps towards this from 27th June as follows:-

Step 1 – Sunday 27th June to Sunday 18th July

 Onsite

• Onsite gatherings will take place from Sunday 27th June at 10am, although they will need to look a little different in the first instance.
• Capacity will be limited due to coronavirus restrictions. Booking is essential and tickets will be available from midday on Sunday for the following Sunday gathering. Once tickets go live the booking form will be available on the Skylark Church website and our social media pages, and also check out the essential information document attached before booking.
• There will be no kids’ church provision during these first four weeks, but children are very welcome to the onsite gathering as part of your household booking.
• There will be fortnightly provision for youth on a Sunday morning from 27th June onwards, which can be booked separately.

Online

• Our online gathering will continue to livestream at 10am.
• We will be expanding the live elements from the building to include the message as well as the hosting to provide an increased sense of cohesion between those gathering online and onsite.

Step 2 – Sunday 25th July to Sunday 29th August

• Over the summer holidays, we plan to alternate between gathering onsite/online one Sunday and gathering outdoors for a picnic the next. On the 1st, 15th and 29th August, rather than gather at the Skylark Church building we will meet all together outdoors for connection and community. Everyone is welcome to attend and you won’t need to book in for this, just come along. More details to follow…
• We are planning to open up a level of kids’ church provision, with capped numbers, for onsite gatherings at this point and will keep you posted with more details.

Step 3: 5th September onwards

“The Gathering” will launch fully on the 5^th September both onsite and online… we hope!

Before booking, make sure you check out the essential information document that’s attached, and if aftewards you still have questions then please email the office on enquiries@skylarkchurch.com and one of the team will get back to you.

Essential Information FAQ.pdf 

Pete and Nicki x

Dated December 28th 2020

The full video update from Pete and Nicki regarding plans for Skylark Church Services in 2021 in response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic can be found here. Continue to read below for the written transcript from Pete Sims.

Hi, everyone. Well, it’s the 28th of December and I hope that you have had a good Christmas. It’s been very different hasn’t it? And I know for some of us it’s been so painful. Well done for making it through to the end of the year. It’s been a really tough and challenging year hasn’t it. Can you believe it was back in July that I made the announcement on a similar video to say that we wouldn’t be gathering together on a Sunday morning until the end of the calendar year at least?

Well, the end of the calendar year is here. It seemed such a long way off when I said it but the time has flown by and 2021 begins in just three days time. The landscape has changed significantly in the last few days. Tier 4, with all of the new restrictions. A spike in the virus and particularly in the Southeast, much more contagious. We’re having to be so careful. And that, at a time when we have heard so many times the NHS is under pressure because of winter and will be for at least the next couple of months. Therefore we have made the unsurprising decision that as we enter 2021 we will continue with Sunday Online rather than with gathering together.

I know this is hard to hear. I know it’s difficult. I know it may not be unexpected but we still long so much don’t we, to gather together but we can make it. Our top priority is to keep you safe. And one of the things we’ve learned during 2020 is that if we hold close to each other and hold close to God we can make it through. We’re so grateful that God gave us the vision of Jesus, To know him, to love him, to follow him and to share him and as we enter 2021 we are going to continue to cling tightly to him. We know the hope to which we hold. Thank you for praying for us during this year. It’s been a really difficult year to lead, both the church and the network. There have been so many unknowns, but we believe that God has given us wisdom just when we’ve needed it. He’s given us some discernment to see ahead and he’s given us courage to make some tough decisions and lots of that is down to you and your faithfulness in praying for me and Nicki. So, please continue to do that as we step into the another uncertain year. We can know that if we hold onto each other and hold tightly to our beautiful Jesus we can make it. One final thing to add is that we will of course review the situation regularly. We’ll be looking at the news, the figures, the government guidelines for places of worship and as soon as we believe that it is safe and right for us to gather again, then that’s what we will do.

But in the meantime continue to join us with Sunday online and stay safe.

We can’t wait to see you again as soon as possible.

Take care.

Dated July 10th 2020

The full video update from Pete and Nicki regarding ongoing plans for Skylark Church services during the coronavirus pandemic can be found here. Continue to read below for the written transcript:

We realise that this has been an exceptionally challenging time for so many and we know just how much people are missing the Skylark family and our gathered times together. We miss you all immensely. Whilst praying over the church recently, we were reminded of a message that Nicki gave back at the beginning of February entitled “Into the Unknown”. As we listened to it again, it encouraged us that although none of us may have understood the change and challenge that 2020 would bring, God knew and was preparing us in advance to walk forward into an unknown, uncertain and uncomfortable future.

You may well be aware that on June 29th the UK Government published advice on the reopening of places of worship from July 4th, with significant changes being required in order to ensure the ongoing safety of all attending, as well as limiting the ongoing spread of Covid-19.

Over the last two weeks we have been through all the published guidance in order to try and understand what returning to Skylark Church on a Sunday could look like. As always, the safety of our church family, staff and volunteers is of paramount importance to us and we have tried to balance the desire for us all to return to meet together with the very real ongoing risks that coronavirus poses and the required restrictions in order to help mitigate those risks.

Given both the level of restrictions and the size of the church, we have taken the decision that we will not be returning to Sunday morning services at Skylark Church for the rest of this calendar year. We will review this further as the new year approaches. This has been a hugely difficult decision to make as we have weighed up the spiritual, physical and emotional wellbeing of our church family alongside the realities of the health and safety requirements that would impact returning to church at this time. Let’s outline some of the guidelines that have shaped our thinking:

• Gathering limits are in place and we need to consider not only the number of people we can fit within the church auditorium at the required two-meter distance, but also ensuring that everyone can safely travel to, enter and exit the building without risking further infection. This would drastically limit the number of people able to attend.
• All households would be required to remain the minimum two meters from one another within the building at all times.
• There is to be no corporate singing within the church due to the increased risk of transmission from aerosols and droplets, even with the use of face coverings.
• Children would be required to remain seated and supervised by their parent or guardian with appropriate social distancing for the entire service. This currently makes it impossible for kids’ church or creche provision for families.
  
• The guidance stipulates that services should be completed in the shortest reasonable time and that no food or drink should be consumed. This means that conversation, coffee time and prayer ministry would not be able to take place before or after the service.

• It remains recommended that places of worship continue to stream or broadcast their events in order to avoid large gatherings such as our regular Sunday services.

As you can see from the above list, this would effectively reduce our Sunday gathering to a small number of people sitting to listen to a sermon and some prayers in the auditorium, which we are all currently able to do from our own homes. Having chatted with our trustees and with our leadership team, we feel it is the right course of action to hold off from gathering on a Sunday morning rather than rush back to our gathering with the current constraints that are in place.

As ever, our priority for the church family remains to keep us connected to God and to one another. It is more important than ever that we continue to press in and to pull together, to support and equip one another as we enter this next phase of what church looks like in these unprecedented times.

To this end, we are excited to announce some additions and some changes over the coming weeks to help facilitate and encourage this:-

• We plan to enhance our Sunday Online gatherings, looking to add a greater breadth of voices from across the church family, as well as incorporating sung worship from the team and other components from our Sunday gatherings such as communion. We will also look to “premiere “on social media so that we can watch together and engage with one another using the live-chat feature.
• Smaller groups have always been essential to the health and discipleship of the church. At a time where we are still not able to gather on a Sunday, the need for life groups is more vital than ever. We are committed to identifying and training up more life group leaders to ensure that everyone who wants to be in a life group can be integrated into one, both online and in homes as lockdown continues to ease.
• We will encourage everyone in the family to identify two “running buddies”, people that we can share our life and faith journey with on a regular basis, meeting up for mutual encouragement, prayer and accountability, whether that’s over a coffee, on a socially distanced walk or a hangout in the park.
• We will continue to explore and plan for the possibility of opening the building for smaller, one-off events or gatherings in the coming weeks and months. More details to follow.

We cannot wait for the day when we can all be together as a family – what a celebration that will be! More than a gathering.  More than a building. We are the church. Our God is on the move and doing some amazing things. We are so encouraged by the way that we have all responded to these times and our prayer is that when we can finally be all together, our faith would be stronger and more resilient than ever.

Love you guys,

Pete and Nicki

Dated 17 March 2020

As you will be aware, the government has introduced stricter measures with immediate effect when it comes to social distancing, travel and gatherings in order to flatten the peak of the coronavirus and protect those most at risk in our society. We have been planning and preparing for this moment for a couple of weeks and want to reassure you that, as your leaders, our top priority is to help everyone remain as safe, connected and well cared for as possible.