Author Archives: Littlehampton United

A member of Water Lane United Reformed Church (URC) in Bishop’s Stortford, has been made a dame in the Queen’s birthday honours.

Elizabeth Gardiner, a solicitor who helped draft the government’s coronavirus pandemic legislation, was honoured for her services to the government and the legislative process and is now a Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath (DCB).

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This week is Refugee Week, a UK-wide festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. As churches, we want to see a world and a society which welcomes the stranger, treating asylum seekers and refugees … Continue reading →

Woking United Reformed Church has found a creative way to ‘sing’ during worship despite Covid-19 restrictions currently preventing congregations singing.

Since the first lockdown, the church established a ‘signing project’ with a Makaton expert who taught the congregation a sign a week during each service.

At an all-age service filled with families on 13 June, the lessons paid off when the entire congregation used Makaton to sing with their hands.

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The next session in the United Reformed Church (URC’s) Black History Monthly series takes place on 21 June from 7.30-8.30pm via Zoom.

Hosted by the URC’s Legacies of Slavery task group, the online conversation will focus on The Case for Reparations, an article written by Ta Nehisi Coates. 

Karen Campbell, URC Secretary for Global and Intercultural Ministries, says: “Although the subject is controversial, many people feel that the arguments are very clear.  For example, in

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Lockdown has been hard on many communities and households but as we move beyond our restricted lives, what needs to change and what needs to remain? Mal Breeze, a Church Related Community Worker from Blackburn, reflects on this question:

The words of the song and album The Times They Are a-Changin, written by Bob Dylan in 1964, must have felt as true then as they feel now, 57 years on. Perhaps even more applicable given the last 18 months of Covid-19.

As individuals we have changed, families have changed, our communities have changed. So too have our churches, and many of us have had to rethink how to carry out our ministry.

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This week is Refugee Week: a week-long festival celebrating the contribution, creativity, and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. Refugee weeks says its vision is for refugees and asylum seekers to be able to live safely within inclusive and … Continue reading →

As world leaders arrive in Cornwall this week for the G7 Summit, the United Reformed Church (URC’s) General Assembly Moderators joined dozens of faith leaders to call on the UK government to use its presidency of the G7 and of the UN climate talks to drive real progress on addressing the climate crisis.

In an open letter to the Prime Minister, they state, “As people of faith, we cannot stand by while world leaders continue to delay action. Delays on phasing out support for fossil fuels and on addressing climate impacts are destroying lives. From the Pacific islands to sub-Saharan Africa, from Bangladesh to Brazil, the climate crisis is a present reality for the world’s poorest people. They have little power to tackle this catastrophe which they did not cause. We ask you, who do have power, to use the UK’s G7 and COP Presidency in their interests.”

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The Moderators of the United Reformed Church (URC) General Assembly are warmly inviting members of the denomination to join General Assembly’s Sunday worship service on 11 July.

The Revd Clare Downing will preach at the service which will be livestreamed from the URC’s national website and Facebook page from 11am.

The Moderators hope this will offer a number of possibilities for United Reformed churches:

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This year’s winner of the MA in Mission prize is the Revd Daleen Ten Cate, Mission Enabler for the United Reformed Church (URC’s) North Western Synod.

Daleen’s MA dissertation ‘A critical examination of the theological basis of a Christian Charity engaged in community ministry’ was deemed by the judges to be a robust and rigorous piece of work which “clearly engaged a community of practice out of deep relationship”.

Churches Together in England (CTE), alongside the Mission Research Network, set up the MA Mission Prize to draw out high-quality, recently passed MA theses to add to a small but growing repository of MAs and PhDs which will be made available on its new website. When launched later this summer, the resource will include about 50 MAs and 20 PhD theses. 

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Members of the URC are being urged to write to their MP to ask them to back a restoration of the UK’s international aid budget in a parliamentary vote on Monday. The recent cut in aid, from 0.7% to 0.5% of national income, broke promises made by the government at the last election and to the world’s poorest people. Billions of pounds of funding for international development projects has been slashed, undoubtably costing lives in some of the poorest places of the world.

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