Viewing all items in Resource Category: Looking at your Church

Ever wonder how many people in the UK have any kind of contact with their local church? According to a recent poll, it’s as much as half the population. Types of contact range from attending some sort of worship, or community services, such as parent-and-toddler groups and foodbanks. The most common reason for people to...

Churches should improve the way their buildings are used by their community. And the survival of many local churches may actually depend on it. So says a new report recently published the Cambridge Judge Business School, part of the University of Cambridge.  Reimagining Churches as Community Assets for the Common Good (REACH Ely) found that...

Leprosy was a problem in biblical times, and sadly, even today, between 200 and 300 thousand people worldwide are diagnosed with it each year. Two to three million people are living disabled lives because of it. Leprosy is caused by a bacillus, Mycobacterium leprae (a relative of TB), and is mildly infectious. It is most...

The Choral Evensong Trust has just relaunched its website to help you find a choral evensong near you. Just visit: www.choralev:ensong.org During its seven years of existence, choralevensong.org has had 30,000,000 hits from 600,000 visitors, accessing services on offer at over 350 churches and cathedrals on Sundays, and also every weekday in most cathedrals and...

The Bible Society is helping women in Pakistan learn to read by holding regular Bible-based literacy classes in the Khyber region. “Before the Bible Society came, there was not a single school for girls in this region. Education for girls was considered immoral,” says Beena, a former hospital cleaner and mother of eight children. “Now...

If the Pope made a decree that reinstated meatless Fridays across the Roman Catholic Church, it would save millions of tonnes of carbon a year. So say researchers from the University of Cambridge.  The researchers also said that if only a quarter of Catholics in the UK went meatless on Fridays, it would save the...

John Paton brought Christianity to the people of the Pacific Islands. He taught them about the love of God and faith. Years later some Communists arrived and told the people they had been listening to mere fables and lies. “There is no God.” “Well, you should thank the God that you do not believe in,”...

 The special gift of Christmas for people living with dementia 160 years of healing in Nazareth A heart for helping the people of the Middle East Church of England commits £2m to helping house vulnerable people Mothers’ Union partners campaign against domestic abuse Church of Scotland’s partners ask for prayers for crisis in Sri Lanka...

Christmas time, with its music and traditions, offers “a special gift” to people living with dementia. Christmas can act as a powerful reminiscence therapy, especially for Christian believers, who will have long term memories of past Christmases, even though their short-term memory (working memory) has faded. So says Louise Morse, a cognitive behavioural therapist and...

Jesus brought healing to Galilee, and nowadays the Nazareth Trust carries on this work through running one of the oldest hospitals in the Middle East. The Nazareth Trust traces its roots back to 1861 and is now one of the largest Christian organisations in Israel. Located in Nazareth, the Trust engages with around 400,000 people...

There are numerous communities in the Middle East which, for one reason or another, find themselves excluded from the mainstream. They are the focus of the charity ‘Embrace the Middle East’, which supports more than 50 health, education and community projects through their partners on the ground. Embrace the Middle East explains: “We enable and...

The Church of England’s Social Impact Investment Programme has committed £2m towards the second Social and Sustainable Housing Fund (SASH II) managed by Social and Sustainable Capital. SASH II seeks to enable charities and social sector organisations to acquire portfolios of property that provide a combination of high quality housing and targeted support  to vulnerable...