A round up of news from around the United Reformed Church over the past seven days, 9-15 September.
Yorkshire Synod
Toll Gavel United Church in Beverley, East Yorkshire, has recently appointed a Pioneer Pastor to work with its New Places for New People project.
The vision is to form a new worshipping community, with a focus on young families within the Beverley and Hull Mission Area. It will evolve out of a strong base of parents, carers and families involved in thriving toddler and youth groups across four local churches.
New Places for New People is already running in parallel with Messy Mondays (pictured), a weekly playgroup run in term time for babies and pre-school children. The group has been in existence for over 40 years,
The shape and structure of the new Christian community are being kept flexible intentionally, allowing the community and the pioneer lay pastor to co-create its direction.
Find out more at https://bit.ly/NP4NP.
North Western Synod
The three-week “Summer Church” at Altrincham URC in August was so successful that parents have asked for another in October.
The August club offered games, crafts and stories for 26 children and their parents. It was made possible by a band of church and community volunteers, supported by the Revd Steph Atkins and the church’s outreach worker, Dave Fraser. Such was the enthusiasm for the event that planning for “Half-Term Church” is now well underway.
National Synod of Scotland
The Church Angels foodbank, based at Port Glasgow URC, has marked 14 years since it was founded. And the need for its service isn’t going away, say its volunteers.
The food bank, which receives strong ecumenical support, opens for two hours every Tuesday and Thursday, with no referral process in place from statutory bodies. “All we ask is [customers] only come once a week for food, but they are welcome to come to the café any time,” says Margaret Wilson, who has been volunteering at the food bank since it first began.
Margaret, 81 (pictured), says the range of people coming for supplies has widened, now including a lot of younger people and foreign nationals, especially Ukrainians”. She has also seen the level of need increasing. In July this year alone, 231 people were supported by the Church Angels.
Margaret says that, “in our denomination, the church has to have a mission in the community, and this is ours in Inverclyde. I don’t know what the people who come here would do if we didn’t exist.”
East Midlands Synod
Wendy Hall has been commissioned as the first of the URC’s Assembly Accredited Lay Pioneers, at her home church of Groby URC in Leicestershire.
Wendy’s pioneering focus is the Under the Willow Tree community, a group supporting families of children age 3-11 years with Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
(Pictured: The Revd Geoffrey Clarke with Wendy Hall)