Viewing all items in Resource Category: Looking at your Church

The Church responds with a resounding ‘Yes’ to that question, as we celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary on 15th August. An ancient name for this day is the transition of Mary – her crossing over to eternal life – or the assumption of Mary. But her story begins in the Gospels, in Nazareth and Bethlehem....

Most people have heard of the Mothers Union, though it’s not quite the force it was in its heyday of 70 years ago. This month the church celebrates its founder, Mary Sumner on 9th August,  and it would be a pity if we forgot her contribution to the social wellbeing of women. She was a...

The Bible Society’s Open the Book (OtB) programme offers primary school children an opportunity to hear the major stories of the Bible through the academic year. It is a three-year rolling programme of chronological stories.  Volunteers from local churches present the stories during assemblies using drama, props and costumes.  OtB meets the criteria used by school inspection...

The ethnicity of churchgoers has been measured across thousands of churches in England in the English Church Censuses of 1998 and 2005, and numbers for other years can be estimated from these.  The proportion of White worshippers is declining, compared with the emphatic growth of many Black churches, especially in London.  In the year 2000...

Christians in Bulgaria are thankful for the turn-around by the government on proposals to restrict the freedoms of believers and the activities and funding of churches. The breakthrough came during parliamentary voting on the second reading of the amendments to the Religious Denominations Act 2002, when all the controversial changes were suddenly dropped. Church leaders,...

A new UK Christian landmark is closer to becoming reality after obtaining a 10-acre piece of land near Birmingham. CEO of “The Wall of Answered Prayer”, Richard Gamble, says this is a huge step towards the vision God gave him 15 years ago, to build a piece of public art with one million bricks, each representing an...

Prayer spaces in public places Our clergy are under stress  The extraordinary Sarah Chang Helping victims of kidnap at sea Summer’s Music Festivals – time for the angels to come! We could make so much more of cathedral tours… A helpful way of learning about the Christian faith ** Editor:  Churches are being encouraged to...

Churches across the UK are to launch Hope Spaces in 2020. The Talking Jesus research found that 41% of practising Christians say that a spiritual experience or an experience of the love of Jesus was a key influence in their coming to faith. The aim of Hope Spaces is to help people to experience God’s...

“The hardest work I have ever done and the most stressful.” That was how Archbishop Justin Welby described his time as a vicar. “It was isolated, insatiably demanding, and I was, on the whole, working without colleagues. That wears people down.” Stress, anxiety and other mental health issues account for one-third of all clerical sickness,...

When, in 2010, 4000 delegates from 198 countries gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, for the Lausanne Movement’s Third International Congress on World Evangelization, one unlikely speaker stood out from the rest.  She was a young North Korean orphan, dressed in her high school uniform, who told the story of her family’s escape from the...

The charity Sailors’ Society has launched a crisis response network to help victims of trauma at sea in Asia, as kidnappings at sea reach their highest levels in 10 years.  In 2018 alone, pirates kidnapped 62 people for ransom in 15 separate incidents. And so the charity, which supports seafarers around the world, has trained...

Summer is here and for thousands of young people that means heading off to music festivals. At several music festival events teams of Festival Angel volunteers will be on hand to offer welfare and support to ensure that those attending have a safe and fun festival experience. Festival Angels started life as a Prayer Cafe,...