St Nicholas Church, Kelston

25/03/2022

Beautiful wedding photos at Kelston Church

22/03/2022

What is going on at St Nicholas?

St Nicholas Church can be seen as two distinct entities: the Church Building and its surrounding Churchyard, and the ‘Church’ as the group of people, many Christian in their beliefs, who support it.

The Church Building & Churchyard:
The oldest parts of St Nicholas Church date back more than 800 years. The building has evolved and developed as successive generations have adapted it to suit their needs. The 5 yearly Fabric Report in 2020 showed the building to be sound and well cared for. The Churchyard continues to serve local people as the final resting place for family members, and as a beautiful, peaceful garden. St Nicholas’ finances are healthy, with solid reserves, but income falls well short of outgoings, meaning the current situation is not sustainable.

The Church people:
The Vicar of St Nicholas, the Revd Michael Farrier, is not only responsible for our Church, but also for Emmanuel (Newbridge), St John’s (Windsor Bridge) and Grace Churches and is only able to commit to leading one service a month in Kelston. Church support is now a core of some 5-6 weekly service attendees, committed to St Nicholas’ aim to ‘keep Kelston Church as a Living Witness to God’, plus a further group of 5-6 individuals who clean, care for, and decorate the church and prepare and deliver the parish newsletter. Family activities have been on hold since March 2020.

Neither the Church Building nor the Church people will flourish without the active engagement and participation of the community they serve.

What thoughts and ideas are on offer?
In June 2019, during the search for a new vicar, St Nicholas conducted a Parish Survey on what people in Kelston wanted in the church. The Survey identified the community’s most pressing need was ‘to maintain a sense of village community and social connections’, a need that has been reinforced by concerns arising during the pandemic and wider anxieties, for example, about the climate. 64% identified the church as ‘a specific focal point for the fundamentals of life and death’. The Survey results are a rich source of ideas going forward. Overall, they made clear that the community was saying that the Church – people and the use of the building – need to be more relevant, and, need to engage the community.

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Thoughts, ideas, plans and your chance to contribute
With the Vicar, the Church Council (PCC) has discussed and agreed that the PCC and Church Wardens will take the lead in working with the Kelston community on the future of the Church.

SIX STEPS to get us going:
1. Spring Cleaning Day: Saturday 9 April 10-12noon – bring your Marigolds, and favourite cleaning kit and come and join us to explore the church and freshen it up for Spring. Families welcome

2. Churchyard Blitz: a day for the green fingered – and the enthusiastic amateur – to prune, rake, clear and plant ready for the new growing season. Date to be confirmed. A more radical ‘refresh’ of the churchyard and regular gardening support would both be warmly welcome. Any volunteers to participate? Please contact Doug

3. New Church Services: to offer people a range of ways to experience the Church, a new rota of services is being trialled including: Monthly Communion (1st Sunday); Informal Gathering for prayer, reading & reflection (2nd & 4th Sunday); and Shared Service alternating between Kelston and North Stoke with visiting guest speakers (3rd Sunday). All services at 10.30am. Why not come along once a month and try for yourself.

4. Seasonal Family Projects: to offer the opportunity for families of young children to join in seasonal projects around Easter, Harvest and Christmas. To get involved and help develop these projects, please contact Mandy

5. Musical Events: we plan to reach out to musicians in local universities and other centres, to offer St Nicholas as a place of rehearsal and performance. Ideas and/or leads? Please contact Mandy or Doug

6. Life Events: we plan to promote St Nicholas to residents and friends of Kelston, as a unique venue for ‘life events’ – weddings, renewal of vows, funerals, memorial services.

22/03/2022

Letter from St Nicholas, Kelston, Churchwardens

Dear Friends and Parishioners

We live on a continuum – we inherit from those who have gone before us, and we hand on to those who will come after us. In Kelston, we are hugely privileged to inherit a built environment that many around the world would give their all to call home. A beautiful countryside, trees planted over generations, and buildings that are mellow, organic, quirkily human And we have inherited a Church, whose history links us back generations. To our forebears who gathered there for solace, comfort, to celebrate and give thanks, to feel the comfort of community with their fellow villagers in times of hardship and of joy. Some would have been devout believers in an all-powerful God, others would have had the full range of human doubts. But Church was a place where all could come together for mutual support, as both givers and receivers, individuals and community members, in good times and in bad.

“Whether you are a person of faith or not, the parish church is something that everyone can believe in. It is that rare place where beauty, peace and kindness come together, a handrail to hold onto when life gets too hard to manage alone. … “A community without a church has had its soul removed.” **Allison Pearson, Columnist, Save the Parish

But just as we are on a continuum, change in life is also constant. The twenty first century is a period of particularly fast change, as information and communication technologies revolutionise our lives. Many Church traditions have become unfathomable! We shake our heads in dismay at forms of communication and belief more appropriate to a Trollope novel, than Baby Boomers – let alone Generation ‘X’, ‘Y’ or ‘Z’!

So St Nicholas Church must change if it is to continue to play its role in the community in Kelston. How? In what ways? To what ends? That is for YOU and our fellow parishioners to decide. We can try some ideas and explore some different approaches, on a journey of discovery. Our only failure to the generations that follow will be not to try.

Sincerely

Doug Creed and Mandy Weston

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