Our Purposes

The purposes below are the guidelines for the work and future of our church. We pray that our practices will develop to allow us to bring about these purposes in full.

Statements of Purpose

We are people of faith, who, with God’s help, celebrate our Christian inheritance by:

Sharing the Sacrament of Holy Communion

• We will maintain the service pattern which suits our current congregation.
• We will create, over time, new ways to cater for those ‘locked’ out by the nature of our current worship provision.
• We will create time and space for our close church family, and time and space for our extended community family, to share and celebrate.
• We will offer space for individual quiet prayer and study.

Holy Communion is transcendent and immanent, complex and simple, quiet and joyful.

Offering Hospitality

• We welcome everybody, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age and status.
• We will connect with our local community.
• We will create new opportunities for our community to make use of our church, and for our church to reach out into our community.
• We will listen, serve and care for our community in a relevant but distinctive manner.
• We will make use of our own strengths, and encourage others to contribute theirs, so that we do all that we can to offer support, learning and service to our community — be they individuals, organisations or schools.
• We will work with our partners and fellow congregations in the community to offer appropriate services which complement those already on offer locally.
• We will recognise the limits set by our small numbers: we must not promise that which we cannot deliver — it is better for us to ‘under promise and over deliver’ on ‘quality’.
• We will measure our success by means other than the simple counting of ‘pew numbers’ attending services.
• We will improve our communication with our community so that there is a fuller understanding of what we do and what we offer. This will help towards changing attitudes about our church.

The Gospel and its application; inviting in and reaching out; connecting and supporting.

Tradition and Change

We value tradition but seek opportunity for change. We recognise that we are, and are seen to be, very traditional. We wish to maintain the best aspects of our Eucharistic tradition, but we also recognise the need for change if we are to remain relevant to the needs of our changing community. This change is a work in progress and has already begun.

We will develop ways to maintain the best of our building’s physical past while bringing about changes for the future. This involves seeking ways to retain the best aspects of our building and its meaning as a place of worship, prayer and spiritual comfort, but also finding ways to create flexible space. This will allow us to encourage the new developments needed to bring about a closer engagement with our community and to meet people’s needs.

• We will aim to keep the church building open during most daylight hours — our church will be ‘visible’ and open to all — preferably with a duty person on-site.
• We will make our space more available for community uses, taking advantage of the central physical presence in the community afforded by our location.

These Statements of Purpose were developed as a result of our exciting project ‘All Saints Forward’, begun in 2009. To learn more about this project, please see our All Saints Forward Project page.