Viewing all items in Resource Category: Looking at your Church

Look around your home. How much of the contents of your bedroom, kitchen, living room and even garage came to you over the seas, via the great merchant ships? What would your home be like without them? Yet when did you last give a thought to the people who bring them to you? It is...

Almost five million people in Haiti, half of them children, face the imminent threat of famine as an extraordinarily active hurricane season approaches the region. Latin America and the Caribbean are predicted to be hit with 23 named storms, and out of those, 11 potential hurricanes between now and November. These could bring landslides, floods...

The demand for emergency food parcels distributed by the Trussel Trust’s foodbank network has nearly doubled in five years, with a record amount being handed out over the past 12 months alone. Between April 2023 and March 2024, 3.1 million food parcels were given out; 65 per cent of which went to families with children....

The free UK debt advice charity, Christians Against Poverty (CAP), has called for more funding for free debt advice, as demand is expected to rise further. CAP’s recently published annual report highlights how two years of high living costs have been crumbling the financial security of millions of households, and leading them into debt. It reports that...

A retreat house on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne is in big trouble. It is very wet! After years of winter wind, gales, and endless rain, the property is suffering extensive damp. Many thousands of people will know Marygate House, which has served visitors to the island since 1970. It is now run by a...

Christian leaders killed or disappeared in occupied Ukraine Sudan – one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises Chaplains keep faith in football When there is bullying in church This is a rubbish campaign Make a joyful noise to the Lord – become a bell-ringer Social Trends in 2024 that churches might do well to remember...

Into the third year of Russia’s occupation of parts of Ukraine, Christian leaders are still being killed, tortured and disappeared. And in Russia, priests who oppose Putin’s invasion continue to be imprisoned or silenced. “As President Putin begins his fifth term our partners describe growing pressure on the Church,” says Paul Robinson, CEO of UK-based...

World Vision is appealing for support for its work in Sudan.  Since the war broke out last Spring between the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, over nine million people have had to flee their homes. Now John Makoni, National Director of World Vision Sudan, warns: “Sudan is currently quite possibly the worst...

Chaplains are playing a vital role in the Premier League and other leagues across the UK. Currently 11 English Premier League clubs and 55 Football League clubs have chaplains, with some clubs having more than one. There are also chaplains throughout the National League and in lower league clubs. The growth in women’s football has...

If you have ever seen churchwardens on a formal occasion, you will have noticed they carry wooden wands, sometimes called staves or prodders. These are upright poles surmounted by a bishop’s mitre, or a royal crown, made of brass or silver. They date from the time when one churchwarden represented the Church and the other the...

Our world has an urgent rubbish problem. But Christians are uniting to take global action. So says the charity Tearfund, as it launches a campaign to highlight the threat of the growing mountains of plastic pollution. “Two billion people have no safe way to dispose of rubbish, and it’s people in poverty who are suffering...

If you love the sound of church bells, and have at least some ‘sense of timing’, why not consider becoming a bell-ringer? Church bells are incredibly heavy – ranging from six hundredweight to more than 28 hundredweight per bell – but anyone is strong enough to ring them.  Ringers range from schoolchildren to teenagers, from...