Food bank remains open but Northampton church stops public worship

A Northampton church is not hosting public worship following Church of England guidelines but prayer will be offered in another way.

Rector, Hayden Spenceley, of Emmanuel Church in Weston Favell is staying at home to self-isolate as he has cerebral palsy but he is chatting to his parishioners over the phone and offering video calls to discuss faith.

Hayden said: "Gathering for services is not happening but we are continuing to pray. This is an opportunity for the church to serve the wider community.

"We're posting video and written content as often as we can, hopefully every day, and, as I'm personally stuck at home, I'm happy to have phone calls or video meetings with anyone who wants a chat or to discuss things to do with faith, hope, doubt, fear or anything else.

"We are also developing system for a group of us to keep in touch with everyone on our contacts list everyday or two, which I'm hoping to have everything up and running by Monday."

Weston Favell Centre Food Bank, which was ran from the church building, is now operating from the former New Look store.

It has been set up as an express service as volunteers over-70 have been sent home to self-isolate.

With limited volunteers staff are conciously pre-bagging up parcels before the service users arrive to limit overcrowding.

Food bank manager Anne Woodly said she thinks it's a bit early to tell whether people are using the food bank because of coronavirus and yesterday (Wednesday) one-third of service users needed the service because their Universal Credit payments have been delayed.

"Yesterday, I think we did just over 50 parcels," she said. "I thought it might have been busier and we were prepared for that.

"But it was much quicker because we managed to get it all bagged up and we were limiting the number of people coming through the door so there was not too many people in one space.

"Normally they have their basic package and select extras but we bagged everything up into parcels and they were probably only in the unit for about eight minutes."

Anne said stocks are being maintained at the moment but pre-empts they might deline in the future and is asking for donations of oil, sugar, salt, washing tablets, toilet roll and tinned tomatoes. She added: "As long as we have the supplies, we will work."

The food bank is operating from the former New Look store at Weston Favell Shopping Centre on Monday from 1pm to 3.30pm and on Wednesday from 10am to 1pm.

Emmanuel Church Cafe remains open today (Thursday) but bosses are making a decision each morning on whether to keep it open.

To ask how you can help donate to the food bank, email [email protected] or look online here, or if you would like to follow the church for updates, click here.