A vicar, known on Instagram as the Portobello Priest, has played Amazing Grace from his car to bring people in his parish some communal joy while in isolation.
Rev Pat Allerton is the pastor at St Peter's Notting Hill and posted a video on Friday of himself driving down Portobello Road with the caption; "If people can’t go to church, church must go to the people..."
In the video, he drives along and explains that the vision is to go around the different streets in his parish and invite people to join in with a classic hymn through a loudspeaker.
"It's going to be very loud, very amplified, so hopefully it won't annoy neighbours too much! But we're going to give it a go to try to lift spirits at this difficult time."
St Peter's Church Notting Hill
Rev Allerton parks half way down a residential street, gets out of his car and says into a microphone: "Good evening ladies and gents, sorry to disturb you...
"I'm not going to preach at you but I did feel we needed to have our spirits lifted," and he invited people living in the flats and houses nearby to look up the lyrics to Amazing Grace.
"My hope is as we sing this together it will be something that brings us together, that lifts us together and gives us hope in these difficult times, and ultimately because it points to the God who loves us and who sent us his son Jesus Christ to die for us, to give us new life - and it's him that we can trust."
At the end of the song people from the blocks and doors clap and cheer and Rev Allerton leads them in the Lord's prayer and then asks if they'd like him to come again, at which people said: "yes!"
"Ok, well you asked for it! See you again tomorrow."
