The Bishop of Basingstoke, David Williams, recently attended a special service of thanksgiving at St Barnabus the Encourager in Darby Green to celebrate the culmination of a year of building work.
The work will offer greater opportunities and flexibility for the church to open up their facilities to the community and share the love of God. It was funded by a £290,000 grant to help those in need in the community. The church was successful in applying for money from the council as part of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
The kitchen has been redesigned with new industrial equipment and walls knocked down to make it bigger. This will allow for more meals to be made as part of plans to run healthy eating courses. There is new lighting in the church and a huge screen has been erected so the space can be divided and used by two different groups. The entrance has been redesigned to make it safer, more welcoming and accessible.
The work has been led by Revd Faith Bailey who came to the parish with husband Stuart in 2023. She said, “It’s really exciting and we’re seeing the congregation grow. It’s the easy welcome into church really. I think the congregation has grown in size from around the mid thirties to fifty in the last year. I hope we will see more integration with the community and the church needs to grow. It’s also introducing people to Jesus and saying look we’ve got good news for you. Come and find out more. It’s building up the good name of the church and that people know we’re here for them.”
The church already provides a space for a number of local community groups including a pre-school, Royal British Legion, food bank, Tuesday lunch group and a Friday café.
On a Thursday, the Fareshare food pantry sets up outside the church and there are regularly queues. Now this can move inside the church with soup being served to those who are waiting. A toddler group is due to start after Christmas and there are plans for an Alzheimer’s café, youth provision will be extended, and the Friday café will opening on other days. Citizens advice now visit the church and CV and job coaching is also planned.
The church sits within Hart District which is one of the least deprived areas of the country but in Darby Green there are pockets of need. The grant was given to the church for community projects to help those most affected by the cost of living crisis.
Stuart said, “We had help from the Diocesan Advisory Committee and initial meetings with the council and other community agencies also lobbied on our behalf. We had to be careful to meet the criteria for the application and to explain how making the changes to the building would have a positive impact on the community. Our parish has got areas of need. We’ve got four schools but we have no pub, no cafes, just a couple of takeaways. We are sandwiched between Yateley, which is a thriving community, and Blackwater and Camberley, but if you haven’t got a car and you live in Darby Green, there’s nothing. We had a real story that we could tell the council and the idea of how we could bridge that gap. It’s a lot easier to apply for a grant when you’re talking about real change that you’ll make to people’s lives.”
During the service, thanks were given for the blessing of the grant and the building project, for lives that have been touched by the work of the church and for the vision to be at the centre of the community as a welcoming and safe place. Prayers were all said for all the groups who use the church.
Churchwarden David Lister said, “All the improvements have given us a great opportunity for multi function, multi use of the church in new ways, reaching out to the community who are starting to take note of what’s going on. My heart is out there in the community and our challenge is to move from being a great social centre to being a gospel witness for Jesus. There are signs of it happening and we can focus more on showing Jesus in word and deed.”
Bishop David said, “St Barnabas in Darby Green is uniquely placed. It was built in 1977. A huge step of faith in those days and today, there’s a renewal of their vision to serve the community, to strengthen their life together in Christ, and to be a place where they receive all that God has for them. This is a remarkable example of a community working together, and I’m so grateful that Faith Bailey is the vicar, and she and her husband, who has been the local mayor, between them, they’ve done something remarkable for both the church and community. This morning, we heard from people who’d been in this church for nearly 50 years, telling their story, and we’re really grateful for all that the future’s going to hold.”
There is still more work to be done. There are plans to open up the café into the entrance hall to make it a bigger and more useable space and for a community garden. And hopes for the future?
Revd Faith said, “I hope to see more of that partnership working and just a thriving healthy church, where we make a difference on every level for people. I think when we came, it was a small church which was growing older, and there’s a sense of hope now. People are looking up. We are so blessed because I don’t think we would ever have raised the money to do what we’ve done and it’s already impacted the church. It’s a gift from God, really and that’s just made everybody feel better, more enthusiastic, more faithful.”
