Saint Paul’s Kingston sits at the far west of Southwark Diocese. Once a month, the church hosts a ‘Sanctuary’, opening their doors and welcoming people in for a variety of activities, as well as chance for a natter over a cuppa and cake. There’s a Repair Café, where visitors can bring electrical goods and items from home that need mending bric-a-brac from home. Someone else is offering sewing repairs and there’s a relaxed craft group. Psalms & Stretches offers an opportunity to spend some time reflecting on scripture and doing some stretching exercises. There’s also a service of Holy Communion and the chance to share lunch together.
“One of the reasons we wanted to do it was just to open the doors and give people who are here a space to come,” says Revd Adam Rylett, Vicar of St Paul’s Kingston. “It’s those who are lonely at home. They have somewhere there they can come and spend time with other people and have a friendly chat. We have some people who work from home who are just fed up of sitting in their home offices and want a space. For some, it’s an opportunity to engage with God in a different way. Since we started doing Psalms & Stretches, there have been a number of people who have joined our church as a result of this way of engaging their bodies and their spirits with the Lord in a way they’ve never done before.”
St Paul’s is a ‘net giver’ to the Parish Support Fund, meaning the parish contributes more than its core costs to support mission and ministry in other churches across the diocese. “We had a discussion in our PCC about how we wanted to approach the Parish Support Fund, and we came up with two principles that we thought would inform our decision about how we give to the Fund,” says Adam. “One of those is generosity: we believe that God has given us everything that we have as a church, so we as a PCC want to give generously out of that as well. And the other one is sacrifice: giving is part of our worship and part of our responsibility – and therefore we trust those who know better to distribute the money as it’s needed.
“Yes, we want to support ministry here at Saint Paul’s. But we also need to think about what it means to sacrifice as we give some of the things that people have sacrificially given to us away again.
“When I read the Bible, I read about a generous God, a God who gives of himself both in creation and in his life with others, but also sacrificially. He gives through Jesus and through the cross. So I think generosity is key to who God is, and generosity is therefore key to what it means to follow him and to be a Christian. No matter what size you are as a church, when you choose to give, that is a sacrifice. And it means that there’s something that you won’t be able to do as a parish. And that’s hard, but I also think it’s the right thing to do.
“I know there are parishes here in Kingston that are receiving parishes, and I know that they do some great ministry – and they couldn’t do that if there weren’t parishes like ours that gave sacrificially. But I also know that there are parts of the diocese where there are other churches doing other things, where that ministry is enabled by what we give, which is encouraging.”
