Liverpool: St Christopher, Norris Green
'A friendly congregation in a Grade 2* heritage building, relaxed and conversational catholic in worship tradition, increasingly engaged with community transformation through the projects such as the Chatty Church Cafe, Norris Green Fingers and the youth discos.' This was how St Christopher's described itself in the first decade (or so) of the 21st century, however over the last ten years, this life and outreach has been reducing.
St Christopher's have had a declining congregation for many years, with a small and faithful group of local people continuing the work of mission and ministry in Norris Green. The impact of the Pandemic was to see further decline in the number of people engaged in the life of St Christopher's.
On Ash Wednesday 2022, the heating system failed completely and was subsequently condemned. The congregation did not have the resources to renew the heating, but nor did the feel it would be an appropriate use of their resources. There were many other issues with the building, that were beyond the capacity of the congregation to repair. St Christopher's was built in the 1930s with much of the funding raised by Children from the Liverpool Diocese. This is why the Church is often know as the "Children's Church" and the Architect, Bernard Miller, incorporated sculptures of Children into the art deco design. Faced with a cold winter ahead and a small congregation, in the Autumn of 2022, the congregation started to meet with The Good Shepherd congregation in their buildings on Lower House Lane, hoping this would enable them to be stronger together in mission, ministry and worship.
As part of the Diocesan strategy, Fit for Mission the Anglican Churches of Norris Green and Croxteth had committed to working together and in the Autumn of 2022, a team from the deanery, supported by those with building expertise, surveyed all of the buildings of the churches committed to being part of Fit for Mission. In this 'Right Buildings Process', St Christopher's was identified as a building that was not fit for mission and would not easily be made so, the process proposed closure and with sadness and regret, the deanery supported this proposal and since then we have been moving forward with the appropriate consultations to consider this.
St Christopher's is one of a group of churches working together towards becoming a new large single parish of Christ our Hope Liverpool. Currently, Revd Canon Helen Edwards, the team rector designate for the new parish, is also priest in charge of St Christopher's Norris Green.
