Date: 18 August 2022
We are committed to a vision of ‘Transforming Church, Transforming Lives’ across our diocese. This is focused on three key areas – Growing disciples, Growing diversity and Growing community. There are already many great examples of our parishes and schools working in these areas, and over the next few weeks we are proud to share some of those stories with you.
Imagine a Church which builds on the community partnerships of parishes, chaplaincies, and schools. That’s one of our three main diocesan themes and St Mark’s Godalming is on that journey.
St Marks is based in a residential area of the town with schools, a shop and community activities like the Scouts.
Until recently St Mark’s served as a community centre, hired out to others.
The congregation recognised that while there was a community feel while the groups were in the building, the church wasn’t engaging with the local community.
“So that was the challenge,” says the Revd Shelia Samuels, St Mark’s Pioneer Curate. “How do we become a church with a presence in the local community, and a church which is active and serving its local community.”
The church developed a Mission Action Plan (MAP). But the plan was not drawn up in isolation. “Our congregation are also part of the community, fully aware of all the changes the community has been through, like new housing developments,” says Shelia.
The MAP identified the need for a period of teaching and training for the congregation. So the church community launched into a six weeks sermon series called ‘creating a culture of invitation’ to teach and remind themselves of what the gospel says about being a hospitable church.
The next stage, following a lot of prayer, was to spend two weeks dropping off surveys to the community to hear what it thought its needs were.
“We discovered that God was ahead of us and that he was preparing the way,” says Shelia. “You can imagine the fear of being told we’re going out to meet our neighbours. There was anxiety about who we were going to meet on the other side of that door. We didn’t need to worry because when we knocked, people were welcoming.”
The church receive its first completed questionnaire within half an hour of it being delivered.
All the results were analysed. The local community identified exactly the same needs that the church’s MAP had thrown up.
“We were quite clear we wanted to offer events for families, children, older people and those who were isolated,’ says Shelia. “And those were all confirmed through the responses in the survey. It was confirmation that God was in this,” she says.
A parent-toddler group was a priority for the community. St Marks’ set one up and welcomed a mix of young families from both the new and established housing estates.
Buoyed by their progress, the church decided to step out further and take the risk of a community fun day.
It was set to take place on a Sunday. In church that day the reading was about Christ appearing to his disciples, locked away in fear of their lives and blessing them with, ‘Peace be with you’.
“Like the disciples we could live in fear and stay behind our closed doors or we could open the doors and see what happens,” says Shelia. “God answers prayer and he answered by sending lots and lots of people to come meet us and takes part in the day.“
“Through this journey of reaching out and growing community we have seen God do amazing things. We have seen people come to the church. We’ve also been able to build relationships with many in the local community.”
“It all comes through listening to the local community, finding out what they are saying and what they are thinking, and working out how we can serve them.”
The experience has been good for the church congregation too. “It has strengthened our faith. We keep stepping out in faith and God keeps answering our prayers,” she says.
St Mark’s feels it’s taken its place back in the community with a real heart and presence, reaching out to everybody with the love of Christ and it is striving to live up to its vision of Growing Community in Godalming.
To find out more about our vision, visit our Transforming Church Transforming Lives page or check out our Transforming Church Transforming Lives playlist on YouTube, which also includes a video interview with Sheila