Goodhand in Banbury

What do you do with a 400 seater pew filled church? It was only really used for a couple of hours on a Sunday when I arrived back in 2008. The organ while still working was never played. The rest of the buildings, loads of rooms, were used by a variety of groups.  I never preached from this pulpit!! The church on the roundabout needed to determine what it was going to do to bring the worship space into real use. So began a long period of discernment. Consultations with the community, scoping workshops, questionnaires and many, many meetings. We explored lots of options for its use while at the same time seeing if we could reshape all the buildings to make better use of the space.  Eventually knowing we were working with a grade two listed building we focused on reconfiguring the worship space to be a sacred space for worship and serving. It took a long time to decide what to do. Being set in one of the poorest parts of Sheffield with its wards being as poor as the poorest in the countr

Members of our church joined our vicar Anita to deliver a week of prayer and reflection through four prayer and reflection spaces at the local Queensway primary school here in Banbury.  Pre lock down Anita and volunteers delivered to the various year groups the opportunity to take some time out to be conscious of the world in which they live, their need to be open to making time to be still and to discover ways in which you can communicate with God.  BeSpace ( a charity) is a well designed and resourced programme adopted by the Oxford diocese and takes place in many schools. Anita who regularly goes into the school was delighted that the school wanted to continue this programme now we have passed through the worse of the pandemic. It meant a school, with a two form entry from year 1 to year 6, was enabled to have all children come into the prayer space through the week. It required 24 individual sessions to be able to break down the classes into smaller numbers. This in turn meant with