Our Mission, put simply, is to know Jesus Christ and to make him known.
• We try to enable ordinary people to live out their faith as part of our parish community through worship and prayer; learning about the Gospel; and developing their knowledge and trust in Jesus. There are regular bible study sessions; home groups have the additional role of building relationships.
• We provide pastoral care for people living in the parishes, and a sense of welcome. We are getting better at welcoming people, but can always do more.
• We have a faithful following of non-Sunday churchgoers and others who come to the monthly Wednesday Worship services and the coffee mornings - and throughout the pandemic we try to keep in touch.
• A confidential prayerline aims to provide extra support and comfort.
• We reach out to people in our community via the benefice website, updated with information about the churches along with details of regular services and special events. Details of special events are also posted onto the village Facebook groups.
• In Boughton, the monthly community magazine produced by the church is normally printed and distributed by volunteers and is also available at local shops, pubs and the library. The magazine keeps the whole community informed of important matters affecting our church and the villages, carries articles that help develop our knowledge and trust in Jesus, and by advertising local services also provides a welcome income that helps with the upkeep of the church.
• During Advent, Nativity bags given out to families in the village contained a Christmas story, activity and prayer as well as a bookmark guiding them to the Church of England Christmas reflections.
• We are a safeguarding church for children and vulnerable adults and an eco-church, working with others to promote awareness of the environment.
Mission,Fairtrade and Eco Church:
Helping those in need is a demonstration of our faith. Charitable donations are made every year to local, national and international charities, and in addition, there are special events which provide collections for the Children's Society, Christian Aid, the Earl Haig Fund and the Salvation Army. We support charitable aid to help refugees and the homeless.
Eco- Church
Our aim is to raise awareness about our responsibility for the future of our world, and we working towards making our activities both as a church and as individuals more ecologically aware and environmentally friendly. We promote the work of organisations such as Fairtrade, which is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. We also link to the Eco-Church movement coordinated by the A Rocha network.
What's a Carbon Footprint, and why should I calculate mine?
Many of our daily activities - such as using electricity, driving a car, or disposing of waste - cause greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions make up a household's carbon footprint. The calculator estimates your footprint in areas like: home energy, transportation and waste.
Reducing these emissions by changing our lifestyle habits will help our environment because rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions are a known cause of global warming.
Carbon footprint calculators like the ones you can link to from this webpage, give a rough and ready estimate to help highlight the areas in our daily lives where we can make changes that will help us do our part to protect the amazing world we live in.
it's really easy to take the survey designed by the World Wildlife Fund and doesn't take long:
http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/
There is also this one from A Rocha:
https://footprintr.me/start?s=0c1eebbe115635c890890ab3f775e7ad
Raising Awareness
We have published in the village Community Magazine a series of articles by Jo Kidd, and add to these regularly. You can click on items in the list below to bring up the PDF file: