Worship
May 15th
North Aston 10.30am United Benefice Communion
May 22nd
North Aston 9.30am Morning Prayer & Baptism
Steeple Aston 11am Communion
Tackley 5.30pm Informal Service
May 29th
North Aston 9.30am Morning Prayer
Tackley 9.30am Family Communion
Steeple Aston 11am Morning Prayer
June 5th Pentecost - Jubilee Weekend
North Aston 9.30am BCP Communion
Tackley 11am Jubilee Celebration Service
Steeple Aston 6pm Jubilee Celebration Songs of Praise
June 12th
Steeple Aston 11am United Benefice Communion
Rector's Farewell
June 19th
North Aston 9.30am Communion
Steeple Aston 11am Communion
Tackley 5.30pm Evensong
June 26th
North Aston 9.30am Morning Prayer
Tackley 9.30am Family Communion
Steeple Aston 11am Morning Prayer
Facecoverings/masks may be worn during public worship.
There is no need to book.
Our church buildings are also open every day. Do feel free to visit at any time. Please use the hand sanitiser when you enter and leave to keep the buildings fresh and clean for everyone, and feel free to wear a face mask when inside if you like.
Worship at Home, our weekly online service during COVID19 finished on June 20th. Some of these services remain available via YouTube.
UPCOMING EVENTS
This is where you can find details of extra events byond our usual Sunday Services.
COVID 19
Our church buildings are now open each day once more and Sunday services continue again in each parish.
We are singing again, and delighted to feel that the things that feel precious are returning to our regular experience.
But we are still being a little careful.
Masks are no longer compulsory when you come into church - but if there are more than a few people gathered in a building, feel free still to wear them if you like so that all might feel safe. If you struggle with masks or just can't wear them, then please come anyway without one and know that we are thrilled you are here.
Importantly: we are no longer keeping every other pew empty so that there is some built-in distancing kept for now. So if you want to build in a little distancing when you come, just put a scarf or a bag next to you and people will respect your space. We understand that some people want to fill our churches, especially at key life points, but our aim is to keep everyone safe and well. At very large services we may well request that all wear masks.
For details on how all of this affects baptisms and weddings and funerals, contact the church wardens. Please do join us Sunday by Sunday as we gather again as God's family in this place, to worship, to pray, to sing and to give thanks together.
And...
If at any time you are lonely or under the weather or grieving or struggling, let us know, so we can make sure you are prayed for. We are not alone. Each one of us is precious, loved by God and cared for by our whole Christian community.
Diary Updates
Church Building Projects
Steeple Aston
For now, our building project is on hold. Thanks to a lot of hard work and generosity we have excellent plans in place, and we very much believe in both the value and necessity of our project. We hope to return to it before long.
Through it all, we started with six principles:
Access - we want anybody and everybody to have good and easy access to the whole church and across the churchyard.
Better heating - a warm church shouldn’t be rocket science in this day and age, and if we can do something to introduce renewable energy, so much the better.
Toilets - whether you are young or old or somewhere in between, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect a public building to have decent toilet facilities.
Hospitality - we want simple hospitality facilities so we can foster fellowship after church, put on decent concert interval drinks, host a small cafe midweek. A church is about loving God and caring for people; hospitality somewhere near the centre of church life.
Children - we need a specific space for our children’s church within our own building so that children know they matter here.
Flexible space - much loved as our victorian pews are, the lives of people in our village today matter more. We want space so we can worship in different ways, have more concerts, welcome the school regularly, find a place where the PCC can meet or watch a midweek cafe thrive. Maybe Sustainable Steeple might make use of the building; maybe we’ll have a Heritage Corner with a permanent display about the Steeple Aston Cope bringing visitors to the village.
We maintain hope that the six aims we have always had will somehow be met so that we can serve our community better.
North Aston
One project has become three. St Mary's For Everyone is our over-all heading, with three separate aims:
1. To renovate the windows in the Anne Chapel, so our building is sound: we have completed this phase.
2. To renovate the lichgate and put in a new, step-free path so that access is easy for everyone from car park to church door
3. To introduce a new servery and toilet into the church, bringing facilities which will enable the church building to be better used by the whole community - from Sunday worship and concerts through to midweek groups. Also, we are improving some liturgical furniture at the same time.
We are very grateful to all those funding bodies and to everyone locally who helped us reach our first target and successfully complete the renovation of the windows! It has been wonderful to achieve this goal. Now we progress to the second part.
If you would like to donate to the North Aston projects, then please send a cheque made payable to "St Mary's North Aston" to St Mary's For Everyone, c/o The Rectory, Fir Lane, Steeple Aston OX25 4SF.
Village Life
Steeple and Tackley have their own websites with details of all sorts of community activities. North has an excellent and informative Wikipedia page. Click the relevant box for details.