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Dear members and friends of St. James,

As we hope you are aware, the Diocese’s Parish Churches are now effectively in lockdown with no Sunday or weekday services. Father Chris is doing a great job of holding Evening Prayer and our Sunday services over our Facebook or Website pages. We hope that this at least gives some comfort to you in these stressful times.

We are in contact with the Diocese who are reviewing all Parish financial situations to see what can be done to help while this lockdown goes on. Obviously St James is still having to pay bills – they keep on coming! – while our revenues have dropped dramatically. No collection plate revenues, no hall rentals etc.

The Wardens and Father Chris are meeting now via Zoom and we want to take this opportunity to ask and encourage you to keep up your contributions in any way that you can. To this end we are suggesting the following:

  • Pre-authorized remittance (PAR) is the most obvious way for the Church to not be affected by this lockdown and still see donations coming in, and if you are not yet signed up for PAR we would ask that you seriously consider changing to this method. Attached you will find the application form which if you would fill in and then send back to either the Wardens, Father Chris or to Todd Hillhouse our Treasurer. This would not take effect until April at the earliest, as Trudy has to then file your application with our provider.
  • You can use our website to go to Canada Helps to make a donation. This comes to us automatically monthly although there is a fee for each donation.
  • Todd is making arrangements so that if you can do an Interac transfer to him at treasurer@stjamescaledoneast.ca he will then deposit into our St James bank account.
  • If you are not comfortable with any of these, then perhaps you would consider bringing a cheque and dropping it off in our mailbox at the main door of the church

The most important thing at the moment is that you all stay safe and healthy, but please remember that if you, or anyone you know, is in need of help or support at this time please let us or Father Chris know.

Peace,

David Finch & Claire Olorenshaw

Churchwardens

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See also the previous post from Fr. Chris on the same subject and the attached documents from the Diocese about Pre-authorized remittance (PAR).