The service can be watched on the Church of England’s website, Facebook page or YouTube channel from 9am on Sunday 14th June.

Click through for a link to the Church of England on-line Church which can be found here (or from the front page or from the prayer resources page here)

Click this link to the Church of England on-line Church

The service will be available from 9am on Sunday. 

Chris will add that Christians are not called to be ‘bouncers’ who police whether people are leading ‘good enough’ lives to come to church.

”God is not going to stand at the door of your heart, knock and look in and think to himself ‘you know what, I am not going to come in, it is a little bit messy there’,” he will say.

“No, as (the Gospel of) Matthew records Jesus saying, whomever welcomes one of you, welcomes me. Anyone is welcome, God’s grace is sufficient for all of our needs.”

He will add: “God’s welcome is wide, his love is deep, he is generous to all who come to him. As Christians we should be welcoming. We are not called to be bouncers at the doors of our churches seeing if people are good enough, clean enough, moral enough, to come in, we should be welcoming to all people.”

Revd Chris, who has nearly 170,000 followers on Instagram and regularly broadcasts on YouTube, will lead the service from St Saviour’s in Wendell Park. There will be pre-recorded contributions from musicians, Choral Scholars of St Martin in the Fields in London and from Holy Trinity Platt Church in Manchester.

The service will include reflections on welcome and hospitality from Bristol University engineering student Tom and Fiona, team manager of nine churches in the Stroud area of Gloucestershire.  

The service will be available online and on the Church of England’s smartspeaker apps. It will also feature on the free Daily Hope telephone service.

A PRAYER FOR ALL THOSE AFFECTED BY CORONAVIRUS

Keep us, good Lord,
under the shadow of your mercy.
Sustain and support the anxious,
be with those who care for the sick,
and lift up all who are brought low;
that we may find comfort
knowing that nothing can separate us from your love
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.

Further information

• On Monday 22 June at 11am (Windrush Day) bishops, clergy, cathedrals and parishes across the Church of England are encouraged to keep a two-minute silence to lament the suffering of the Windrush Generation and wider issues of racism in society. A minute’s silence will be observed during the online service on Sunday.
• Explore the full range of online resources provided by the Church of England.