50 Things You Can Do in a Church
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50 Things To Do In A Church What can you do in a church? 1.Sing 2.Pray 3.Be silent 4.Talk to the vicar 5.Have a cup of tea 6.Listen to the gospel 7.Celebrate communion 8.Listen to the sermon 9.Look at the stained glass windows 10.Light a candle
If you get stuck after this it is perhaps not surprising as these are what we have been used to for the past 100 years, (the Victorians liked to keep churches just for worship). Amazingly though, if we look further back we will find that churches were always used for all sorts of activities, including the sitting of the local court, buying and selling animals and having community celebrations. Some of the churches I have ministered in have expanded their activities to include: holding a barn dance, having a sleep over, having a community Childrens’ Christmas party, holding a treasure hunt and hosting Family Group Conferences and Community consultation events re planning issues (these last two run by the local council). Christ Church had a creation festival, band concerts, has a fair trade stall and holds a film club afternoon once a month. Our sister church, St Clement’s Urmston has had art exhibitions, concerts, and the young people’s cafe church have even played Pop lacrosse up and down the North Aisle. Nowadays churches do all these and more and the National Churches Trust is raising awareness of the fact that 90% of churches regularly hold non worship activities in their churches. Their list of 50 things to do in a church includes the following; 1.Honour the Fallen 2.Find the Church Cat (the school children who visit us each year will tell you about Puddles the Harvest Cat) 3.Ring the bell(s) 4.Climb the tower 5.Use the Free Wifi 6.Take part in ride and stride (not sure what this is!!!) 7.Research your family History 8.Stand in a triple decker pulpit 9.Buy Fair trade chocolate 10.Light a candle 11.Go to a Comedy Night 12.Sing in a choir 13.Go to a yoga class 14.Learn English 15.Go to a Flower Festival 16.Enjoy a beer Festival 17.Have a cream tea 18.Have a night out at the opera 19.Go to the Post Office 20. Holding Community Meeting 21.Go to cast your vote – church as polling station 22.Visit a Farmers Market 23.Watch a film and so on and so on…. For more information and a flavour of what these might look like, take a look at the pictures on http://www.nationalchurchestrust.org. The ones in bold in the list above are things that we currently do or events we have done recently at Christ Church in addition to the ones on the first list. I think that churches can be pretty exciting places to be! If you have any ideas about activities we can run in Christ Church please talk to the vicar about it. She would love to hear from you. Thank you. Reverend Karen
PS: For further details of all our church activities please keep an eye on our website and also on the website of St Clement’s Urmston. |
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