Posts by Nick Jackson

Parish notices: 5 December 2021

An update on our coronavirus measures

In light of recent developments, we have paused the decision to reintroduce the Common Cup as part of our Eucharist. We also request that you wear a face-covering whilst in our church and Community Centre unless you are medically exempt.

We suggest that you continue to take precautions such as taking regular rapid lateral flow tests, keeping your distance, and being respectful of the wishes of others. You’ll still need to sanitise your hands as you enter the building, and avoid handshakes during the Peace.

If you have any symptoms of COVID-19, remember that you must self-isolate and get a PCR test. As always, we will continue to stream all our services live on our website and YouTube channel, as well as make them available to listen to later by phone or podcast.

As always, we are keeping a close watch on things such as infection rates, as well as guidance from the Government, NHS, and the Church of England, and we may make other changes to our safety measures in the future.

Our Christmas services

Take a look at our Christmas Services page to see what’s happening when and where.

Messy Church Christingle service

Sunday 12 December at 4.00 pm
Starting in Whitkirk Community Centre

Come along to this traditional celebration – suitable for all ages – and turn a humble orange into the light of the world!

Coming up at Whitkirk Community Centre

The Sword in the Scone

Wednesday 8 to Saturday 11 December at 7.15 pm

Whitkirk Arts Guild give the legend of King Arthur a twist in their annual family pantomime. Complete with knights and a king, a witch and a wizard, a dragon, and oversized baked goods. Book your tickets online, pick up a flyer in the Community Centre, or call 0113 212 0066.

Country Dancing

We are hoping to re-start this popular country dance class in January.  It will be held on 2nd and 4th Monday in the month, from 1.30 pm until 3.30 pm. Come along and give it a try for a good afternoon out among friendly faces – no experience needed!

Please contact Dorothy Howe on 0113 264 2569 for further information and to let her know if you are interested.

Continue reading “Parish notices: 5 December 2021”

Wake Up


Sermon Year C – Advent Sunday
Jeremiah 33.14-16, Luke 21.25-36
Revd. Matthew Peat

You have just held aloft the world cup for England or bowled the perfect googly at Lord’s to win the ashes.
Won bake off! or the Monaco Grand prix.
Written the perfect bit of computer code or won the nobel prize for chemistry.
Designed a new gadget that will change the world or are simply on a white sandy beach with palm trees in the background and a glass of champagne in your hand.

But then this wonderful moment is interrupted by this strange buzzing sound, or perhaps voices or music, or “This in the news at 6 o clock on Sunday 28th November”.

Our dreaming is interrupted by the cruel sound of the alarm clock calling us to wake up.

For a moment you are lost, a little bewildered as the boundaries between dream and reality are blurred but eventually you realise you it was just a dream.

Some of us have vivid dreams. Dreams that are remembered and recalled the next day. Some of us never remember our dreams. Yet we all dream.

And if we don’t remember our night dreams, we have dreams in our waking hours too. Dreams
about who we think we are, what we hope for and what we want to do.

Of course we need dreams but sometimes even in a small way we can build lives on them.

They become a kind of elusive fantasy as we imagine a life that is always somewhere else, and never happens for all sorts of reasons.

So that we never really live in the present.

Into this talk of sleep and dreams and fantasy, in the midst of the dark and cold nights of November and December when we wrap ourselves in our duvets and don’t want to get out of bed comes the season of Advent.

An alarm clock season, calling us to be alertness and to be ready as we think of Christ’s coming.
St. Paul memorably plays with the imagery of being awake and asleep in his letter to the Romans when he writes of how ‘it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep’ .

The collect for Advent Sunday draws on Paul’s language as through it we are invited to ‘cast away the works of darkness and put on the armour of light’ When? ‘now’ the collect goes on ‘in the time of this mortal life.’

Advent is the alarm clock season, a call to wake up…..now!

Continue reading “Wake Up”

Parish notices: 28 November 2021

Reintroducing the Common Cup

From today, you can once again choose to take communion as both bread and wine. You can read our full update on this, or watch the video.

If you would prefer to only receive communion in one kind (as bread only) this is also considered to be full communion by the Church of England.

Real Advent Calendars

We’re once again selling the only Advent calendars to tell the Christmas story – Real Advent Calendars. Available from James for £4.50 each.

You can also pick up one of our selection of books, or an Advent candle to mark the days as we approach Christmas.

Our Christmas services

As we rapidly approach the season of Advent, it’s time to let everyone know about our Christmas services! Take a look at our Christmas Services page to see what’s happening when and where.

Messy Church Christingle service

Sunday 12 December at 4.00 pm
Starting in Whitkirk Community Centre

Come along to this traditional celebration – suitable for all ages – and turn a humble orange into the light of the world!

Coming up at Whitkirk Community Centre

Christmas Not-Just-A-Coffee Morning

Saturday 4 December at 10.00am

It’s not a full-blown Christmas Fair, but it’s so much more than a coffee morning! Come join us for a cuppa and some cake, or if you’re feeling a touch more festive you can enjoy our mulled wine. Browse a selection of stalls perfect for smaller gifts and stocking fillers, take your chance with our famous Christmas Raffle, and sing your favourite carols around the piano.

The Sword in the Scone

Wednesday 8 to Saturday 11 December at 7.15 pm
Great seats available Wednesday and Thursday, only a few seats left Friday and Saturday

Whitkirk Arts Guild give the legend of King Arthur a twist in their annual family pantomime. Complete with knights and a king, a witch and a wizard, a dragon, and oversized baked goods. Book your tickets online, pick up a flyer in the Community Centre, or call 0113 212 0066.

Continue reading “Parish notices: 28 November 2021”

Reintroducing the Common Cup

Matthew talks about reintroducing the Common Cup to our worship at St Mary’s

From Advent Sunday (Sunday 28 November) we’ll be reintroducing the Common Cup at Whitkirk. This means that if you want to you’ll be able to take communion in both kinds – both bread and wine – as part of taking communion during our services.

If you’d like to take communion in both kinds, we’d appreciate it if you could mention this to one of our stewards so that we can consecrate the right amount. Don’t worry if you forget, this is just to help us get a better idea of numbers.

If you’d still rather take communion in one kind only, you can continue to do so and this is still considered by the Church of England to be taking communion in full. All you need to do is take the bread as you usually would, and then return to your seat.

You are free to start or stop taking communion in both kinds whenever you want. As with all changes to our worship during the pandemic, we’re keeping a close eye on things like infection rates as we make our decisions, and we may make further changes in the future.

An update from your PCC: November 2021

The Parochial Church Council meets regularly throughout the year to discuss and make decisions on all kinds of issues relating to the Church at Whitkirk.

We think it’s essential that the parish know what their PCC is talking about, which is why we’ll be sharing these updates after each meeting. We won’t go into the nitty-gritty details of what we discussed but will give you an overview and a summary of decisions. This is a summary of the meeting held on 16 November.

  • We decided to reintroduce the Common Cup from Advent Sunday, with it being made clear that people do not have to take part if they do not feel comfortable.
    • This decision has been temporarily paused due to the latest infection rates and emergence of a new variant of concern.
  • We made some updates to the contract for maintaining the Church’s grounds, increasing fees in line with inflation and clarifying how often we review things.
  • We agreed to invest in some new secured equipment storage.
  • The Church’s finance team gave us an update on our income and expenditure, along with some estimates and targets for the year ahead.
  • Updated text for our new Environmental Policy was proposed and approved, and this policy has been adopted by the PCC.
  • We heard an update from our safeguarding officer about adopting the latest version of our Safeguarding Policy, and on some updated training which PCC members must complete.
  • We looked at an updated structure for the PCC and its various subgroups, and continued to work towards a revised structure following the upheaval of the pandemic.
  • We discussed upcoming events and courses.
  • A note of thanks was discussed and agreed on for West Yorkshire Police for their assistance with road closures for this year’s Act of Remembrance.
  • Thanks were passed on to members of the PCC and congregation who have donated items towards the Christmas “Not Just A Coffee Morning” raffle and stalls.

If you have any comments, or if you’d like to raise an issue for the PCC or one of its committees to discuss, then please let us know!

Parish notices: 21 November 2021

Real Advent Calendars

We’re once again selling the only Advent calendars to tell the Christmas story – Real Advent Calendars. Available from James for £4.50 each.

You can also pick up one of our selection of books, or an Advent candle to mark the days as we approach Christmas.

Our Christmas services

As we rapidly approach the season of Advent, it’s time to let everyone know about our Christmas services! Take a look at our Christmas Services page to see what’s happening when and where.

Coming up at Whitkirk Community Centre

Christmas Not-Just-A-Coffee Morning

Saturday 4 December at 10.00am

It’s not a full-blown Christmas Fair, but it’s so much more than a coffee morning! Come join us for a cuppa and some cake, or if you’re feeling a touch more festive you can enjoy our mulled wine. Browse a selection of stalls perfect for smaller gifts and stocking fillers, take your chance with our famous Christmas Raffle, and sing your favourite carols round the piano.

The Sword in the Scone

Wednesday 8 to Saturday 11 December at 7.15 pm
Last few tickets on Friday and Saturday!

Whitkirk Arts Guild give the legend of King Arthur a twist in their annual family pantomime. Complete with knights and a king, a witch and a wizard, a dragon, and oversized baked goods. Book your tickets online, pick up a flyer in the Community Centre, or call 0113 212 0066.

Continue reading “Parish notices: 21 November 2021”

Post-mortem: Remembrance Sunday

We streamed Remembrance Sunday! This is a first for us, having pre-recorded the worship and act of remembrance last year, this year we wanted to make sure people could still take part even if they weren’t able or comfortable to join us in person.

We talked a bit about how in last week’s notes, but this is all about looking back at what happened; what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what we can do in the future.

Things that we liked

  • Feedback was almost immediate that it was widely appreciated, with people in the Community Centre who couldn’t make the procession to the War Memorial feeling like they were still part of the service
  • The audio system at the War Memorial – entirely battery powered – behaved exactly as we expected
  • The communication between different members of the Tech Team was useful in letting people know the current state of the broadcast

Things that we didn’t like

  • The radios we used to stay in touch caused some interference to our audio
  • One of our remote cameras failed to connect properly
    • Although this didn’t turn out to be a problem, because people then stood in front of it anyway
  • Mixing audio from remote camera sources didn’t work as smoothly as we would have liked
    • Although this didn’t turn out to be a problem, because we were down to one remote camera
  • We forgot to make sure the usual automated bells to signal the 10.00am service were switched off, so they started ringing 15 minutes into the Remembrance Sunday service.
  • Uniformed organisations weren’t in place in time, so we were left using less than ideal camera angles to cover the beginning of the service

Things we learned

  • We need to check that all our tripod mounts are compatible as part of our planning exercise
  • We need to have more planning for where people stand and when things happen, because mistakes are recorded for all time and are visible to the world
  • Where we have a roving camera who is focussing on action in front of them, they need a spotter if they’re moving around (especially if they aren’t moving forwards)
  • We need to make sure we have the necessary permissions in place for video work involving uniformed organisations further in advance

Things we’re going to do

  • Write a new checklist for hooking OBS into our usual stack ready for including external video sources
  • Write a new checklist for outside broadcast camera setup, to reduce unexpected configurations
  • Work out exactly how audio mixing should work, and make sure that’s part of the checklist
  • Start keeping common playbooks with churchwardens etc around these special services and events, so we have a shared understanding of what happens and when
  • Investigate ways to move the antenna for tech radios outside, to both improve reception and reduce interference

Parish notices: 14 November 2021

Real Advent Calendars

We’re once again selling the only Advent calendars to tell the Christmas story – Real Advent Calendars. Available from James from today for £4.50 each.

Coming up at Whitkirk Community Centre

Christmas Coffee Morning

Saturday 4 December at 10.00am

It might seem a bit early to be talking about Christmas, but we want to make sure you had time to pop this one in your diary! Although we sadly can’t run a full Christmas Fair this year, we didn’t want to leave you without a chance to share a cuppa (or a glass of mulled wine), a slice of cake, and the chance to sing some carols around the piano.

The Sword in the Scone

Wednesday 8 to Saturday 11 December at 7.15 pm

Whitkirk Arts Guild return to the stage with their annual family pantomime, giving the legend of King Arthur a twist. Book your tickets online, pick up a flyer in the Community Centre, or call 0113 212 0066.

Continue reading “Parish notices: 14 November 2021”