FoodSharing & Fairsharing
Over the pandemic St Paul’s has developed its partnership with many local supermarkets, in order to support families and individuals suffering from food poverty and to reduce the quantity of healthy food going to land waste.
Our team of volunteers collect healthy
produce from the supermarkets each week including fresh fruit, vegetables and pastries. These are put on display and those who come to our coffee shop or Loaves & Fishes Children’s Lunch Projects in the holidays see that they are available.
We are extending this ministry to have a permanent storage facility for the produce and are in the process of extending this into a Community Fridge; a national network that enables any from the community to donate into the fridge as well as to receive from it. We are in contact with local allotments so that other members of the community can bring fresh produce they have grown for those who need it.
These ministries continue to rely on a great number of willing volunteers both from our church and our local community, working in partnership for the good of all.
Revd Ben Beecroft, Vicar of St Paul’s Church, Addlestone
Online Church Opens New Ways of Community Interaction
At St Peter’s Church in Chertsey, the experiences of the last 15 months may have been as traumatic and challenging as everywhere else but they have also opened the door to a whole new world of interacting with people that would have never responded to the traditional way of church life. Clearly, there was a big need in the wider community to find comfort and reassurance amidst the insecurity of a rapidly changing pandemic world. The result is a whole new congregation, grown while sustaining and now welcoming back into physical church life, their existing ones. Here are some of the activities that have helped to make this happen.
• Morning Worship Online
Sundays 10:30am
Our main Sunday worship was pre-recorded with the worship team producing a large number of pre-recorded songs to use each week and members of the congregations (usually 4/5 per week) recording welcomes each week. We also featured regular recorded interviews with members of the church on 'life and faith'. Through these services we had initially 800+ people a week engaging with us but this dropped as the pandemic ran its course. Significant numbers of worshippers were from beyond Chertsey.
• “Hope in a Time of Fear “
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 9pm
A 15 minute reflection and prayer for the church and community on Facebook Live
This now continues once a week and has evolved into “Midweek Refreshment” as a permanent fixture.
• Alpha Online
We have now run two well attended Alpha Courses as a result of our new contacts, with a third to begin in June 2021.
• “Sceptics’ Space – Big and Complicated Questions about God and Faith”
A video series produced by curate Matt White and run fortnightly online.
The videos are now an ongoing resource on YouTube.
• Small Groups 24/7 Prayer Course via Zoom
This was used by five of St Peter’s eight small groups and they are now completing the second Prayer Course by Pete Greig.
• 24/7 Prayer Fortnight Online in May 2020
• Streamed Funerals
St Peter’s conducted over 40 funerals during lockdown, most of which had less than 30 people attending but a significant number were streamed via St Peter’s YouTube channel, where some received in excess of 1500 views. This was exhausting but essential!
• Compline/Prayer Before Bedtime
Fridays 10pm on Facebook Live
• Holy Communion Online
Fortnightly Sundays 7pm on Facebook Live
• Morning Prayer
Mondays & Wednesdays 9:15am
Up to 12 people have joined the regular core team via Zoom, more than was usual for physical morning prayer in church.
We are aware that now proactive steps are needed to turn the positive outcomes into lasting benefits. Some of the extra options, such as Midweek Reflections, will continue and St Peter’s, like many other churches, will go down the “dual approach” road, streaming most “in church” services via Facebook and YouTube. An Online Alpha version is also likely to remain available.
To consolidate our new online congregation, we have introduced an Associate Church Membership for those living away from Chertsey but having “remote worshipped” with us regularly online and taking part in Alpha or small groups.
A new initiative just starting up is ”Lockdown Babies”, a twice weekly “in person” event for parents with babies born during the pandemic. For more information on this (or any of the above) please contact
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Previous page: Sceptics’ Space YouTube Channel;
This page top: various Services on St Peter’s Church YouTube channel;
Bottom: Easter Service on Facebook & setup for “Lockdown Babies”;
CREDITS for text and all photos: Revd Tim Hillier, St Peter’s Church, Chertsey
St John’s Eco Festival & Messages of Hope
St John’s revised eco event featured the beginnings of the Hope theme that reappeared strongly in their Christmas 2020 programme as we learned in their seasonal review last month. In this issue, Rima talks us through the nine months of planning this event under the encumbering circumstances of pandemic restrictions; as she puts it, “like a marathon runner pulling a car tyre round 26.2 miles”. A story from which we can take encouragement to be flexible, to be unafraid and to find inspiration and God’s finger in the most unlikely places…
Finding God’s Guidance in a Calendar
I’m pretty sure God was talking to me through my calendar, a motivational calendar my brother gave me in December 2019. And what has this got to do with St John’s Eco-Festival? A lot, as you will see…
January 2020: Success is a Journey, not a Destination
Sunrises, rainbows, wild animals, trees and sunsets mean far more to me than a quote. In fact, this meant nothing to me at the time but when covid19 hit, it slowly made itself heard…
In January 2020, we had set a date for St John’s Eco-Festival from Friday 10 to Sunday 12 July and created a thread to collect some ideas. At the same time we functioned in the old normal: running on the treadmill of working, visiting people, helping, sorting out eco-acts and doing lots of activities. The Eco-Festival was far from our minds which assumed we would be doing something similar – education, some stalls and repairs.
February 2020: Don’t be afraid to fail, believe. Get up, do it. Never listen that you can’t. You can!
God was laying the foundation and planting seeds of thoughts.
The Eco-Festival had been put on the agenda but we didn’t have time to discuss it amongst all the other eco-actions taking precedent. As Covid was silently spreading throughout the UK, my brother in Singapore was warning me, asking about the action the UK was taking…
March 2020: This too, shall pass.
Covid had hit the UK and I mildly observed the Calendar quote, agreeing with it as a passing thought. We held our first online meeting.
April 2020: A Smooth Sea Never Made a Skilled Sailor
And during April the seas were choppy! Were we in the same boat or were we in different boats in the same storm? We were still steering towards a physical festival, hoping like the Spanish Flu this virus would subside, but a skilled sailor adapts to the swirls, the storms and the waves – and so would we!
May 2020: Enjoy Your Life
Covid had caused life to slow down and for us to appreciate the natural world. In Egham, our natural world had been drowned out for so long by Heathrow planes and M25 traffic. Our community began to understand the importance of our natural world and how it positively affects mental health and wellbeing. Environmental stewardship suddenly became obvious to many more. We had forgotten what it was like to have quiet nights and fresh air, hearing the birds sing. Many more were actively enjoying life and their surroundings now.
But the covid sea was still choppy and sensitive, the weather ahead extremely uncertain, especially with parts of our society sailing their boats haphazardly. “We should make it part virtual and part physical, allowing for social distancing to ensure it will run.” I boldly suggested.
This was going to require a lot of work and perhaps I was the only one who could see this but we needed to give it a go. February was talking… Remember, Peter could walk on water as long as he kept focused on Jesus. (Matthew 14:22-33)
Being one of the few in our group who understand technology, I was asked to create a framework.
“Sure but I still need all of you to help me!” I had never created a virtual festival but was now the captain of the boat and needed to encourage the crew to help me.
Hilary was the first wanting to jump the boat, feeling technically the weakest and too old to be part of a virtual event. But we needed Hilary’s amazing creative mind. One of her many ideas was the Trail of Hope….
June 2020: Where there’s life there’s hope
Hilary became my rock and, although she may have thought she was too old to get involved in a virtual world, she redeveloped herself to help me put the ideas together within an online mind-mapping tool.
Time was extremely short; reaching out to the community and putting together the online content was a full time job. There were moments when I felt the swells would overturn our boat but…January was calling out. Jonah 1 teaches us how God is with us and wants to reach out to the community.
With many online discussions being crafted in such a short time frame, an editor was desperately needed. Sleep was wanting but my marathon background had trained me to focus on the nearest checkpoint. 25 posts had been developed that needed checking. The eco-team tried to fit it in between work…and Hilary stepped up to edit the majority.
July 2020: You are the Creator of your own Destiny
Life can be overwhelming, if we allow it to…but we can decide how we will respond when we feel we are drowning. We can either call for help or sink under the water. I asked for help – “many hands make light work”. There was still much to do: liaising with speakers, collecting their online videos, uploading videos, online ticket creation, more post development and marketing.
Romans 8:31 “If God is with us, who can be against us?”…It is important to note that at this point the success of the Eco-Festival 2020 was made possible by collaboration and support from our Eco-Church and that others within the Church had indeed come forward to provide either technical help or support towards the Messages of Hope and physical mini fair, as well as lots of prayers.
I do not know if many of our church members watched the online discussions but I do know that we touched many within our community and beyond. As well as from Egham, there were attendees from the USA, Italy, Spain, Scotland and Ireland.
August 2020: Among the lucky, you are the chosen one
Dunno about luck but St John’s Eco-Church is being recognized within the community as we build bridges with councilors and MPs to help develop the borough’s climate change strategy together. Our Vicar Esther has prayed for love for each other, love for the community and love for our environment. Our Eco-Church’s love for our environment has sent out love, and hope, to its community members and leaders.
September 2020: I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards
This is the month our Eco-Church team finally put together hope messages, collected from both the community and church members, and put them on display. Thank you all who have contributed!
Hope comes in many shapes and forms.
The Eco-Festival turned out great and was a real success that reached many people and built many bridges. Perhaps we need to run more virtual marathons “with a tyre”.
© Rima aka Tyre Lady
CREDITS for all photos and text: Rima, St John’s Church, Egham
“Outside In” Christmas
Christmas presents, arguably for all of us, our biggest opportunity of the year for outreach and contact with our local communities. The phrase that God had repeatedly put into many of our hearts over this last year had been “outside in”. With Christingles, Community Panto and our Christmas Tree Festival all set in the first week of December – before even thinking about carols, cribs or Midnight Mass – we were challenged as to how we engaged with our community with a church building that is, at best, limited in access. The answer was to ask them to be Church!
Technology not only provided the platform for us to take things on-line but also allowed our local community to be a central part of our worship in a way that may not have been possible in the building. Our “Walking into Christmas” campaign consisted of local stakeholders (all three schools, uniformed groups, publicans, British Legion, local councillors, doctors, Foodbank, community groups and members of the church) recording a reading a day from 1 December telling the Nativity story up to and including Christmas Day.
Photo: Cllr Robert King contributed to “Walking into Christmas”
Our tree festival, although much reduced, provided a church lit up from the inside, open for a walk to the crib and prayer space.
Our clergy recorded their Christmas message for the local schools who were unable to host their carol services in church. The annual church/Scouts panto went out live online (fun but chaotic!) with more viewers than we would have had in church.
Photo: Steve Baynes, Val Monk, Graham Rule (St Paul’s), Malc Leverett, Jeff Liddiard (1st Egham Hythe Scouts) in Cinderella.
Similarly, the carol service with pre-recorded material, including RHUL’s Director of Choral Music, Rupert Gough, and the Founder’s Choir, attracted more views than attendees in 2019. Our Christmas Eve “First Communion of Christmas” service streamed on YouTube Live with, again, views way outreaching the previous year’s attendance. All of these recordings can be found on our YouTube site .
While these may be familiar stories to those who have been blessed with the technology (and budget!) to optimise online experience in the past, it has for us been the learning that will shape our next phase of ministry. The call for a collective gathering of us all, whether clergy or lay, whether church member or not, is what will keep St Paul’s at the heart of our community. We will still gather and worship online and in person, often through a ‘both/and’ combination, but it is joining in with God’s mission, out where he works in our community, that will answer His call to “be Church from the outside in”.
CREDITS: Steve Baynes, Deanery Synod Representative, St Paul's Church, Egham Hythe
Embracing the Virtual World in Englefield Green
As with many churches here and elsewhere, the repeated lockdowns have forced St Jude’s into the previously unexplored world of online presence – an experience that has turned out much for the better and has become such a staple of our community that some of it may well be here to stay. Here is a sampling of things that will give you a feel for how the virtual world has sustained us and opened up new horizons over the past year:
YouTube Services:
Since Mothering Sunday 2020, Vicar Judith Alford and Methodist Minister Andrew Reed have been thoughtfully and carefully leading online services via our YouTube channel. Advertised via our Facebook page and monthly newsletter, The Ship, these have attracted viewers from further afield than we could ever hope to reach – as far as Mexico, Australia, America, South Africa and Singapore! Beyond our regular congregation, we’ve attracted families and friends, and it has been a great joy and blessing to have them worship with us for the ‘premiere showings’ at our regular 9:30am service time or throughout the day and following week.
Services have included contributions from many members of our congregation, bringing us bible readings, talks and prayers, and even from the wider village community with residents and key workers sharing about life and work since the start of the pandemic, and beautiful music and singing from both solo artists and virtual choirs. We are regularly seeing more than 100 views every week which for a small village church is a lot!
As with many churches in our Deanery, we’ve been able to worship in our church building since September but have continued to stream pre-recorded videos or live links to services directly into the homes of our congregation and friends and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Thanks goes to Guy Bunce for his incredible support without which none of this would have been possible.
The Vicar's Jottings:
Since the first lockdown began, Judith has posted a thought for each day on our website and Facebook page. The first series of ‘Judith’s Jottings’ ran to 148 days, and after a very brief pause (for some well-deserved time off!), the second series restarted on 1 September. Judith’s Jottings reach between 60 and 80 people every day, and again are shared around the globe to extended families and friends.
Zoom Bible Study:
Since June 2020, we’ve been holding Bible Study meetings via Zoom; two meetings each week – Wednesday evenings at 7:30pm or Thursday afternoons at 3pm, with the same programme in both sessions.
The ‘Ship of Fools’:
Finally, we’ve started a WhatsApp group for some members of our regular congregation, to share messages and news. So far there’s only a small group linking up in this way but we are still looking into options for how best to use this additional communications channel.
All in all, our virtual presence has given us a much larger reach, both in terms of number of people interacting with our services and teaching and in terms of extending their Church life throughout a wider section of time than Sunday mornings. Hopefully, in time the many seeds sown in that way will burst into life...
CREDITS for slide and text: Claudia Tubb, St Jude’s Church, Englefield Green
Christmas Cheer in Ottershaw
In December 2020, Christ Church organised a Christmas Cheer Trail around the village. The whole community was invited to take part in this event and decorate their front windows, doors and gardens on the themes of The Twelve Days of Christmas, the Christmas Story and Anything Goes! The aim was to provide an enjoyable and positive activity for everyone, especially young families, after a very difficult year.
It was also an event that people could take part in within COVID restrictions. A trail map of locations and details of decorations were put together and available as a download or hard copy. The event was publicised to the whole parish and everyone invited to walk the trail and then make a donation to Sam Beare Hospice.
Part of the trail included a giant Christmas wreath on the vicarage door made from children’s hula hoops and representing the Twelve Days of Christmas theme of Five Gold Rings. The trail also led to the church to see the scene of our church nativity figures, illuminated in the parish centre window, and a poetry path from the lych-gate to the nativity scene with Christmas poems and verses from well known carols.
The event was a good outreach initiative in raising the profile of the church within the parish and in serving the parish. It involved people who may not have had previous contact with Christ Church, not entered the churchyard before nor known that the vicar lives in the heart of the village. Many people enjoyed the trail and a significant sum was raised for Sam Beare Hospice.
Other events during the year included an Online Auction, a Little Christmas Catalogue for makers and buyers of craft items and some online quizzes. A sponsored parish walk is taking place in June. For more information about any of these events please contact Christ Church at
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CREDITS for photo and text: Lesley Matthews, Deanery Representative Christ Church, Ottershaw
Reinventing Monastic Practice Online
One of the successes of the past year in the life of Royal Holloway has been an informal Lectio Divina group on Zoom. In collaboration with the Catholic Society we have gathered on Zoom each Thursday lunchtime and read a passage, usually the gospel for the coming Sunday, three times over, with a few minutes for silence in between. This has proven very fruitful, helping people to engage deeply with the texts used in our Sunday services. At some points I have recorded the sessions and have been able to use some people’s reflections as ‘vox pops’ for our video services, and often informing our preaching on the texts.
Photo: Some members of the Lecto Divina group
CREDITS for photo and text: Revd Orion Edgar, RHUL Chaplain
“Maranatha” – A Reflective Advent & Christmastide
At St Mary’s Church, Thorpe, the difficult pandemic year prompted us to take people on an extended journey of reflection and prayer around the theme of “Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus”. All the way from First Advent to Epiphany, that is through the seasons of Advent and Christmastide (i.e. the Twelve Days of Christmas), we offered daily meditation videos on a dedicated Maranatha Blog. These were put together by our clergy team and various members of our congregations, with much creativity and attention to detail, vaguely following the book “Come Lord Jesus” by Geoffrey Rowell and Julien Chilcott-Monk. The videos were on average 15min long and contained Bible readings, poetry, music and reflections, all pertaining to each day’s theme, plus usually transcript and additional reading or YouTube listening material below. We are pleased to say that each video was fully viewed over 40 times at time of publishing and the Maranatha Blog is now a permanent feature inviting anybody to make that journey in 2021 or in the years to come.
“Maranatha Online” was complemented, for those who were able to travel to St Mary’s Church, by a Christmas Wonderland experience staged in the churchyard, with a daily evening carol service playing on our outdoor speakers. This large nativity & lights display was especially popular with many families and children.
Photo: Christmas Wonderland with Outdoor Nativity at St Mary’s Churchyard
Photos courtesy of St Mary’s Facebook page and Maranatha website.
Moving Outdoors
After months of online services, we have been encouraged by the success of the vaccine rollout and the general optimism around the government’s roadmap to easing restrictions into resuming “in person” worship – but with a twist! On 9 May, we relaunched our new style evening service where we could worship together – including singing! – outside under cover in the Vicarage garden. The event was so popular it is a possibility it will remain a feature during the warmer months even once restrictions ease!
Photo: Sorry, no photos of the evening service, but one of the marquee – still standing despite the gusty May weather.
Other events that have proven very popular and enabled us to bring the message of salvation to our community have been an outdoor Easter Egg Hunt in the churchyard, Church Forest School and our socially distanced carol singing around the community; all supporting our vision “In the Community – For the Community – To The Glory of God”. If you would like to know more about these events, feel free to contact Annette at
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CREDITS for photo and text: Annette Ross, Deanery Representative Christ Church, Virginia Water
This is the month our Eco-Church team finally put together hope messages, collected from both the community and church members, and put them on display. Thank you all who have contributed!