Our joint parish Holy Communion service on Sunday is at St Mary and All Saints' Church, Dunsfold at 10am. We hope you can join us.If you're elsewhere, or housebound, you can join us online by clicking on the following Zoom link.https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5253921788?pwd=MC9kNmpldmFrRSsrV1pkc1k5aU1vZz09
PLANS are under way to set up a Church of England housing association to provide social housing on church-owned land across the dioceses.In February of last year, the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing published its report, Coming Home, which described as “a national scandal” the fact that eight million people in England live in overcrowded, unaffordable, or unsuitable homes (News, 26 February 2021).On Tuesday, members of the Commission, Church Commissioners, and other leaders met online to review progress on the recommendations in the report, which included using some of the 200,000 acres of land owned by the Church for social and environmental benefit.The Archbishop of Canterbury told the meeting that a radical approach was needed. “The housing crisis is getting worse rather than better because of high levels of inflation and very rapidly rising levels of poverty, with incomes rising far below the level of inflation, and the likelihood of recession — all these have put enormous pressure on housing,” he said. “If you are building a more just society, housing is one of the main building blocks.”The First Church Estates Commissioner, Alan Smith, said that church pilot schemes were key to this. The Commissioners were building 30,000 new homes on 60 sites across England; fewer than one third, 9000 homes, would be affordable, however. He said: “We want to start digging beneath that — truly affordable — and begin to push into areas of affordable housing where there is a big gap, and where the truly vulnerable are not being served right now.”Church land was not enough, however, the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani (see photo), who is the lead bishop for housing, said. “This degree of social change . . . requires more land and buildings than we currently have, and it needs to be deliverable to every part of the country. If we only develop housing on the land we currently own, we’ll never bring about the justice we long to see; nor will it be enough to turn the tide of the current housing crisis.“That’s why we are proposing to set up a Church Housing Association which will enable us to deliver housing, social change, and ministry funding beyond the realms of our existing inheritance into more marginalised areas where the need is greatest.”
Around 50 young people from the Portsmouth area took part in the residential event organised by ‘High Tide’ — a network of church youth groups which runs a monthly worship gathering in the area. As the young people arrived on Friday evening, they got to know each other with games before the first church teaching session that night. Throughout the weekend, lively worship and teaching were interspersed with activities from paintballing and swimming to survival techniques, like how to make a fire. The teaching was focused on topics such as how social media can encourage people to be ‘seen and liked’, whereas God says we are ‘known and loved’. There was also opportunity to listen to stories of personal faith and respond in prayer and discussion groups. In the evenings, singing around the campfire under the stars was followed by a night walk along the beach. Chloe Smith, 18, who attended said: “I really liked the night walk, as we would walk with young people from other churches and see the sights." Spending this sort of weekend away with other teenagers from church was “really refreshing” Chloe explained. “You can enjoy the worship and discuss things seriously.” Josh Murphy, 16, said: “It was good to meet young people from other churches – and this gave us a chance to spend more time with each other.“I enjoyed all of it – the teamwork in the paintball, the swimming, the football, and the prayer sessions and the worship.” With a strong focus on discipleship, the young people were also encouraged during the weekend to think about how to ‘move forward’ spiritually when they would return home. Dom DeBoo, Children, Youth and Families Minister at St Jude's Church, Southsea, said: “It was a brilliant weekend, most of the young people have taken significant steps forward in their faith journey – with some encountering Jesus for the first time.”
