Connecting Communities, Serving People - The Church & Social Cohesion event: Liverpool 30th September

Register now for an exciting and thought provoking event coming up in Liverpool on 30th September!

Connecting Communities, Serving People, The Church & Social Cohesion will take place on the afternoon and be hosted at Liverpool Town Hall. Find out more and register here:

“An opportunity to hear about the Free Churches report on the Church and Social Cohesion in the North of England Context”

You can download a copy of The Church and Social Cohesion report HERE.

(cover photo courtesy of Nathan Dumlao at Unsplash)

Education Sunday is on 12th September: lots of inspiring worship materials to share!

For well over one hundred years there has been an annual recognition of Education Sunday in England and Wales. It is a national day of prayer and celebration for everyone in the world of education.

The theme is devised by an ecumenical steering group representing different Christian denominations and organisations - the theme this year is “A Word in Season”. There are lots of interesting worship materials to share, including a new hymn written by the URC Minister, Revd Anne Sardeson.

To help you get ready to celebrate this day in your church and community:

This year, the resources have been inspired by: Isaiah 50. 4-9a, Psalm 116. 1-8, James 3. 1-12 & Mark 8. 27-38

(cover photo courtesy of Markus Spiske at Unsplash)

Involved in teaching RE? Anti-racist RE resources at the start of the new academic year

Are you or someone you know involved in teaching Religious Education? If so, these anti-racist RE resources for teachers may be helpful as plans develop for teaching this coming year.

The Free Churches Group and Methodist Schools are delighted to be able to offer these resources free of charge to teachers. They have been written and developed by Lat Blaylock from RE Today Services, and a team of teacher-volunteers from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds has provided valuable contributions.

In our society it is no longer sufficient to be non-racist, but we need to be equipped to be anti-racist. Many members of the Free Churches Group are engaged in their own conversations about how to combat the inequalities in our society. These resources are a tangible expression of that concern and a contribution to engage with the issues in the public square. There are materials for teaching in both primary and secondary classes. You can download these materials here:

We are grateful to the Westhill Endowment for providing financial support, without which this project would not have been possible.

(cover photo courtesy of Naassom Azevedo at Unsplash)

Jesus says, 'Consider the ravens...'

In Luke’s Gospel, we read that Jesus challenges us to consider the ravens, assuring us that despite the fact that they neither sow nor reap, God still feeds them… The theme for this year’s Prisons Week offers us all the opportunity to reflect upon Christ’s words about God’s abundant and constant love.

Through prayers, films, poems and worship resources, we are led through a week of prayer for Prisons Week.

“Prisons Week has prepared prayer literature to enable the Christian community, through individuals and churches, to pray for the needs of all those affected by prisons: prisoners and their families, victims of crime and their communities, those working in the criminal justice system and the many people who are involved in caring for those affected by crime on the inside and outside of our prisons.”

— Prisons Week

“Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn;

yet God feeds them.

And how much more valuable you are than birds!

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life.

Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?”

Luke 12:24-26 NIV

(cover photo courtesy of Mark Timberlake at Unsplash)

Shaping our Every Day Prayer – Zoom Conference September 22, 2021

Joint Liturgical Group of Great Britain presents

“Shaping our everyday prayer”

A Zoom Conference for all who pray and lead prayer in Christian Communities

22nd September 2021

2.30 p.m. – 5.30 p.m. (Zoom will open at 2:00)

For more info, please visit HERE.

Join in at Zoom link HERE

There is no registration fee, but donations will be accepted on the day, for the costs of the day and the on-going work of the Joint Liturgy Group.

Contemplation & Prayer — Fr. David Birchall will lead the Conference in imaginative contemplation and reflective prayer.

Watch and Pray: responding to visual art as a practice of prayer — Revd Peter Gardner will invite us to open our eyes, to look with attentive curiosity and to consider what we would choose to look at when we pray. He will reflect on ways that contemporary visual art practice can enhance our ways of seeing and transform our everyday prayer as individuals and worshipping communities.

About our presenters:

Fr. David Birchall joined the Jesuits in 1976 and was ordained in 1985. For nine years he was the Director of St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality centre. He is currently Director of the Ignatian Spiritual centre in Glasgow.

Rev Peter Gardner lives and works in Glasgow. Visual artist and Church of Scotland minister, Peter studied at the University of St Andrews, Edinburgh University and Leith School of Art. Ordained in 1988, Peter has served in rural and city centre Parishes and currently is the Church’s pioneer minister among the visual arts communities of Glasgow. Together with his wife Heidi, they form visual artist duo Gardner & Gardner. Their art practice focuses on temporary, site-specific installations and interventions, often set within the context of worshipping communities and their buildings, introducing a conceptual element into the sacred architecture and drawing attention to the sacred found in contemporary culture.