Hounslow Deanery

Parish Churches serving communities across north-west London

Monthly Archives: April 2020

22 Apr

Updates and Useful information 20th April 2020

Dear Friends,

Following Thursday’s Zoom meeting, below is a list of important information for clergy to know during the current COVID-19 outbreak. This is a long email, but please do read through to the end!

Funeral Information

  • Funerals are currently being organised locally by Funeral Directors. The centralised system is available, but most people are just using the normal means of contacting clergy. If you are isolating and unable to do any funerals at the moment or have more than you’ve got capacity for, please email me as we can help to share the load.
  • Funeral Fees are currently waived. This is an expectation rather than guidance and applies whether the deceased is a COVID19 death or not. Please make sure your local Funeral Director’s know about this.
  • Funeral Pastoral Care for Clergy is available in the Kensington area from John Ryeland. He can put you in touch with a wide range of services that might prove helpful, such as a listening ear, prayer, psychotherapy and more. Email: john.ryeland@london.anglican.org
  • New Funeral Standards have now been released by London’s Strategic Coordination Group (SCG), please do familiarise yourself with them (available here) and let me know if you have any questions. The press release from SCG is here. 
  • Liturgy for Thanksgiving and Memorial Services for future use are currently being put together. Watch this space for the update on this along with any new liturgy.

Community Care

  • The Food Bank at St Paul’s Hounslow has capacity to deliver more widely so do refer people if you need to. The Referral pack isavailable here.
  • They would also appreciate additional volunteers to sort the food into bags in preparation to be collected/delivered. If anyone has volunteers who are under 70 and don’t have any underlying health conditions please email Revd Claire Clarke with their name, email address and telephone number so they can be added to the list of volunteer helpers.
  • Do people in your community need meals? Working with charities, the landlord of the Anglers Pub in Teddington is making meals that are frozen and can be delivered to vulnerable or older people who are isolating. Delivery and collection are available. They are still working out the logistics, but if you want to know more please click here, or contact Ben (07921 331508) or Jamie (07900 681167).
  • Looking for more sources of help? The Hounslow Rotary Club has put together this useful document that outline areas you can go to for different problems

TrainingBuilding Church during the COVID19 crisis. This week’s zoom, on Thursday 23rd at 2pm, will be an hour with Daniel Mackintosh, from Citizens, focusing on Community Organising and Congregational Life.

How could our congregations be different coming out of Covid19? We barely had a chance to plan upon entering this crisis, but we can plan for how we come out of it. Churches are adapting and finding new ways to grow and deepen in this moment. To build on that join us for an hour to share stories of how community organising, through organising charity Citizens UK, has been used to strengthen congregational life, develop those who have stepped up to leadership and inspire innovation in church practice.

Join the  Zoom Meeting on Thursday 23rd of April at 2pm
Click this link (https://zoom.us/j/334060828) or use the meeting ID: 334 060 828

Financial Support

  • Giving to Churches. Churches are taking different approaches to encourage ongoing financial giving from the congregation during this crisis. Some are putting links to giving pages/ via church suite on their website, another church is using DONATE by text to encourage people to give as they don’t seem to take a percentage (details can be found here), others are putting BACS information on church emails so that people are encouraged to keep giving, despite not being at church.
  • Helping people during the Crisis. Capital Mass has published this guidance to helping people financially during this crisis, we really do encourage taking a look through.


If you’re not on the clergy WhatsApp group please send me an email with your mobile and I’ll add you to the group.

I hope to see as many of you as possible on Thursday 23rd at 2pm for the training on Building Church during the COVID crisis.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch,

07 Apr

Funeral Guidance during the Covid-19 Outbreak

Thank you so much to everyone who has volunteered to help with funerals during this difficult time. For your information, with effect from 6 April 2020, the London Diocesan Fund authorises parishes and their clergy to waive all fees for funerals, whether due to the PCC, or Diocese.  This is due to the COVID 19 / Coronavirus, and will be in place until 30 June 2020 when this matter will be considered again.
At the bottom of this post, please see four documents supplied by the diocese to assist in your funeral arrangements during this time. The areas we would like to highlight to you are:
  • The Central point of contact for all churches in the Diocese of London: funerals@london.anglican.org / 020 3837 5008 from Wednesday 8th April, from 8am to 10pm 7 days a week.
  • Every funeral should have a celebrant
  • Shortened services – see Funeral Ministry Info below
  • Pass the details of funerals you take to keiron.ronan@london.anglican.org
  • Consider Memorial services at a later date

Funeral Ministry Information. The updated briefing paper that has been issued to Area Deans is available here.

Funeral Directors.  For details of a central funeral line for you to pass to your local funeral directors at your discretion please click here

Clergy Support Team. A list of those available to support clergy who are officiating at funerals is available here.

Supporting Ministers in Funeral Ministry. The notes from Hilary Ison for those taking funerals can be found here.