TidenhamWellbeing Projects
LATEST NEWS!
We are delighted that our Wellbeing Project has been awarded a grant from the Benefact Trust, one of the UK's largest Christian grant-making trusts, designed to help churches, Christian organisations and their communities.
Here's a little about how this all started! Following ordination, Revd Janice Hamilton served as Pioneer Curate for the Parish, funded by the Diocese to work three days a week on the Pioneer Project in Sedbury which centred on the development of Sedbury Space. This is now thriving with lots of community focus - see their website for more details. We now have Revd Nicki Bullivant to drive more Wellbeing focused projects in the community with Pilates for a spiritually healthy mind and body, Parish coffee mornings, focused prayer, Chaplaincy Chatroom, Bible Study and extra support at Sedbury Space. This support also includes our St Luke's Little Larder.
Following COVID and in the cost-of-living crisis, our Parish needs to rebuild Church and community and to meet the social needs of isolation, poverty, and mental and physical health challenges of the most vulnerable. The Wellbeing Project offers a programme of engagement with our community, to address emotional, psychological, spiritual, and physical wellbeing. We meet these pastoral needs through community ministry, mission, nurturing faith and engagement in the life of the Church by our Parishioners, from babies through to elderly people.
Taking a holistic approach, the Wellbeing Project delivers two key outcomes:
1. The Church will have a transforming effect our parishioners' wellbeing.
2. More adults, children and youth will become engaged with faith.
Focus will be on three community initiatives and seed/planned activities include:
Chaplaincy in Sedbury:
• Sedbury has no Church building, so we are providing a chaplaincy in Sedbury Space through a chat space, monthly and Christmas lunches, and a bereavement support group. Also, relationship breakdown counseling and support in cooking on a budget courses to help those in need.
• Building inclusivity, e.g., health and wellbeing for Mums/Dads/Carers, family trips and events in the local community.
• Networking with social services, health providers, hospices, and other local agencies to identify those in need.
• Mental and emotional wellbeing through pastoral support for vulnerable parishioners.
Post COVID recovery and the cost-of-living crisis across the Parish:
• Broadening participation in family services through engaging more church adult leaders.
• Working with local schools through partnership with Sportily and investment in wellbeing and mission.
• Discipleship through nurturing future youth leaders.
• Building environmental resilience in parishioners to post COVID society, economic challenges, increased social pressure and exposure to war and suffering in the world.
St Luke’s Church as a Wellbeing Hub:
• Building faith through discipleship and community engagement, and spiritual development in the Parish of Tidenham.
• Physical wellbeing through the Pilates sessions and therapeutic massage for those in physical difficulty.
• Mental wellbeing through mindfulness sessions and safeguarding against domestic abuse.
• Babies and toddlers’ groups providing support, sharing vision, and promoting baptism.
• Increasing the number of community larders available following the successful pilots in St. Luke’s Church.
Lattes after Pilates
Watch the team tell you more about the Wellbeing Project here:
Our Little Larder