We have been talking about the future of evening worship at St Matthew’s. During the vacancy, evening services were cut back from every week to twice a month. The numbers who attend make it difficult to justify the resources required to run a choral evensong.

Over the winter months, some of our regulars find it more difficult to get out on a dark, wet or frosty evening, so numbers look like dropping even further. The Church Council has therefore decided to try an earlier start time. For the first quarter of 2016, therefore, our evening service will move to 4:30PM. We will keep the pattern the same – there will be a service of evening prayer from the Book of Common Prayer on the first and third sundays of the month. We hope that this will encourage more people to attend, perhaps even those who wouldn’t normally come to evening service.

The Church Council will then review the situation to see if it has made a difference. If you have any thoughts on this, please get in touch.