Diocesan News
Caring through Covid
The leadership team at St John’s, Orangefield, in East Belfast has come up with a simple idea to help parishioners connect with each other and with God in this Covid–dominated season.
Care Clusters are groups of three families, three couples or three individuals (or a mixture!) committed to staying in touch at least once every fortnight, with one simple purpose: to support and encourage each other.
The rector, the Revd Ross Wilson, explains: “We sensed that, as a church, we needed to do more to care for each other especially when there are restrictions on gathering together. God created us for relationship with other people but an hour on a Sunday isn’t really enough, especially for folk who are struggling to get through in these difficult times.
“Because this wasn’t happening organically, we decided to be proactive and at the same time try not to give our folk yet another time and effort consuming thing to do. That’s when the idea for Care Clusters came to us.”
Initial uptake has been encouraging with a total of about 60 people taking part. Many have formed clusters based on existing friendships whilst others have asked the church to place them in one. The groups don’t have a leader as such but work naturally and have been a real source of support.
Dan Livingstone, his wife and 18–month–old are in a Care Cluster with two other young families in the church who both have two children aged 4 and under.
“We were all keen on the idea of setting up a Care Cluster together and we have mainly done this through WhatsApp,” says Dan. “It’s been easy to communicate more often and in small updates and chats rather than a long call every 1–2 weeks. This suits all of us well, as many will know that with young kids, a couple of minutes here and there is sometimes all the time you get!
“We also recently met up for a picnic in the park, and this was a great way to relax and chat while letting the wee ones run around the park and get to play with others of their age, which can be less frequent at the minute with the lockdown.
“We’ve shared prayer requests across the group, and I find it really encouraging to know there are others out there experiencing the same difficulties but also supporting and praying for you through it, and we hopefully have been able to reciprocate.”
If you’d like to find out more about setting up Care Clusters, please contact Ross Wilson by email: ross@stjohnsorangefield.org
For further information please contact:
Diocesan Communications Officer, Down & Dromore
07840 006899
Mrs Annette McGrath
dco@downdromorediocese.org