New Interactive Community Calendar

How do you like our new Community Calendar below?… Thanks to our wonderful new secretary Gaby for getting it up and running. It is a new step for us to put it up like this and we hope it can be of use to our website visitors and community to maintain an overview of what is going on. There are still a few small hitches and please do contact us if you notice any problems we should know about. It is interactive and it should be possible for you to move around the calendar to find those things you are looking for.

Latest News:

Michaelmas 2021

After a really tough year and half for all of us, we are just so grateful to finally find ourselves with a full programme of events again. Of course we are also so very grateful to all those who continue to support us financially and those who have newly come on board with online donations. (See the donate button below…) This means that financially we have remained strong and stable and can continue to be there for those who seek us and our work.

We have been able to resume renting out rooms again which are being used by a wide cross-section of educational and cultural initiatives. It fills our spaces with life and good content and helps us support our finances all the more. Rental rates are very reasonable so if you are interested don’t hesitate to enquire.

Our Latest Programme for Michaelmas to Christmas 2021 can be found here.

Visiting priest

It is with great joy that we welcomed Paul Corman on Sunday the 5th September 2021 as our visiting priest for the next 6 months. He grew up in the USA and has worked 30 years in the congregation in Lima, Peru. he is available for consultations and special sacraments and his contact details can be found under the ‘contacts’ heading in the menu bar.

Subscribe to News and Content up-dates

We continue to send out a weekly Community News on Wednesdays as well as a weekly Saturday Support to prepare for the Sundays with sermons and other content via our Mailchimp email list. If you would like to receive these you are welcome to sign up to our email list by clicking here. It will take you to a signup document where you should fill in your details and click the ‘News up-dates’ box and then subscribe at the bottom. You can always unsubscribe by clicking at the bottom of any Mailchimp email you receive from us.

Our 2021 Children’s Summer camp

We did it! We had a wonderful camp from the 17th – 27th July with 85 children and 30 helpers and by all accounts the children had a wonderful time – and by now the helpers have caught up on their sleep! We certainly intend to hold the camp again next year 2022. It will be sometime around the second half of July and first part of August but the dates still need firming up. Here you can find the camp website with more information.

Funeral Fund

We have created a special fund for those who wish to pay for their funerals ‘in advance’ so to speak. The idea is that one pays in an amount to the fund to cover the anticipated cost of the funeral (currently +- £4000) and any additional sum to become a special sacrament donation to the church in the event of the funeral. It remains a loan for which there is a signed agreement with the church which can be found here. The agreement can be cancelled and the money withdrawn with 2 month’s notice if need be. The idea is that the congregation takes on all the financial dealings with the Funeral directors and crematorium etc, which liberates the family from having to do so, and it serves as a loan which earns interest for the church and which the church can use for capital development until the time the money is needed. For instance this financed all the alterations in the annex to allow for the building project a few years ago. We currently have a good number of members with money in the fund. If you are interested in pursuing this further contact one of the priests or Paul Abel who manages the fund, via the church email stroudchristiancommunity@gmail.com

If you wish to support the church please donate to the below account. All donations will be gratefully received. Do let us know if you are eligible for Gift Aid.

  The Christian Community in Stroud        Sort code – 30-98-29         a/c no – 00091757

St Bride’s Fund

We are beginning to really enjoy the versatility of our new spaces and also St Bride’s Hall. We always said we would like to transform St Bride’s into a worthy and practical multi-purpose space for ourselves and others who rent. In this way we could do our best to support the social and cultural life of our community and beyond. With this in mind a small group – Ian Bailey, Piet Blok and Aaron Mirkin have made some initial steps towards making this happen. Please read the full letter here. Donations can be made into our regular church Lloyds account using the donate button above with the reference ‘St Brides’. Good news is, thanks to the fund, we already have the new blinds, the new loop system for hard-of-hearing, new projector screen and backdrop rails. – and most recently are about to have the old roof finally cleaned of the thick moss. Next in our sights is to upgrade the access between the hall and the kitchen and build a new porch roof outside the Annex. Thanks to all who have donated to the fund so far.

Our new church

Our new church was officially opened and consecrated in October 2019 and continues to be a source of renewed joy and strength for our sacramental work.

Video of the new church – Here is a video interview about our new church that was very generously and kindly done for us by Peter Richardson in December 2019. He also did the Spring Fair video that is linked on our website. He is one of the co-founders of Stroud Community TV. 

Here also is a recent article written in the De Zeen architecture magazine describing the innovative architecture of our new church.

Here is another article from ‘Architecture Today’ describing our new building.

and…

Our new building has been shortlisted for the 2021 Structural Awards!

(The final vote will take place on the 5th November)

The Christian Community in Great Britain is a registered charity in England & Wales

Charity number 210029.