COMMUNITY ‘It’s Chapel, but not as we know it.’ That sums up this very challenging year. At least we started the year in the Chapel building; that made a refreshing change from the Summer Term of 2020 when the College community was scattered across the globe and our worshiping life was restricted to YouTube services. However, though we came back into Chapel in September 2020, the new social distancing restrictions meant that we were limited to year group congregations. This means that the sense of the whole College community gathered together under one roof was last experienced
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in March 2020. Moreover, the year group congregations were still not allowed to sing hymns; that famous College ‘wall of praise’ has not been heard for over a year. What took its place was a new development - the Year Group choir. Occasionally, the congregation joined in with the choir by enthusiastically clapping the verses of ‘Shine Jesus Shine’. At least clapping was deemed to be Covid safe. We brought the Autumn Term to a close at Christmas with a beautiful choir-led Carol Service for the Sixth Form which we were able to stream live. And then we were back to remote Chapel. Throughout this period our pupils were amazing.
They wrote and recorded Chapel talks, readings and prayers. Once again, the Chapel experience bound the College community together during a very difficult time. All our prayers and hopes are now focused on a return to normality this coming year. My thanks go to our visiting preachers and all the pupils who amazed us with fantastic Chapel talks. On that note, I am happy to announce that the joint winners of The Jackson-Matthew’s Prize for the best Chapel address are Alexander Taylor on ‘Blessings’ and Georgia-Lili Robertson on ‘Forgiving One Another’. Dr Adam Dunning COMMUNITY
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