Tag Archives: St Andrew’s

Church, Movies & TV

Alternative Church Fundraising

Leave a comment
ChurchPic.jpg

If you are an Eastenders fan I’m sure you will have been glued to the show on Friday night, to see the second attempt by Billy and Honey to get married. It was also a good example of one of the other ways that churches are raising money for repairs, as rather than being a Church in Walford – like many of the locations on the show that aren’t permanent sets on the back-lot at the studio – it is actually a Church in Watford. In this case it is the Church my parents attend, St Andrews, one of a number that have been used by the show over the years.

The last appearance of the building in the programme was a while back, when it was the location for Dot and Jim’s wedding, and also used for the christening of Louise, daughter of Lisa and Phil. The more recent church events have been held at another local Church, however the BBC came back to St Andrews for the recent programmes. This time you also got to see a bit more of the Church, including a nice shot looking down the length of the aisle, and also use was made of part of their vestry that has a nice rose window. There were also a couple of external shots too.

Having the BBC has it’s benefits too. The local crematorium apparently now has a nice set of artificial flowers thanks to regular visits from Eastenders. However it also has it’s hassles. St Andrews church hall is actually in the former north aisle of the Church – the door of which was hidden behind a curtain on the programme on Friday night. However during term time there is a nursery school that uses the hall, and of course they are not allowed to be around when Eastenders take over the building. Luckily for this batch of filming, the school could make alternative arrangements. There is also the disruption to places used for filming. For example it wasn’t until Friday that Mum discovered why she hadn’t been able to find anything in the vestry recently!!!

Having said that, for Churches struggling with limited finances, it is a great way to earn a little extra income, and also makes use of a building that will be largely unused during much of the week. Although current policy in St Albans Diocese require that all scripts are approved by the Archdeacon. This is partly because the scripts for programmes like Eastenders have previously had to be corrected to accurately reflect Church practice (for the Christening episode the crew turned up with the writers having written their own baptism service – on that occasion the Archdeacon was on site and asked that they used the proper service instead), however the full approval policy came in following an incident at another Church in the Diocese where the building was booked by a film company, and it later transpired that they were using the building to make a porn film…

Incidentally, if you saw the programme on Friday, you’ll have seen that the wedding itself didn’t actually take place, so there should be a return visit to St Andrews in the not to distant future.

Church, Pictures

Trains and Teas for Christian Aid

Leave a comment
Millie

Yesterday we went up to my parents to help out with their contribution to their churches Christian Aid collection. Like many churches, they have struggled with the traditional Christian Aid week collections, where in the past envelopes have been delivered to every house in the parish, and then these have to be collected. As most people who have been involved in a collection like this will tell you, it is actually a lot of work for a comparatively small return. Many people fundamentally don’t like being door-stepped anyway, and therefore don’t really like doing it to somebody else.

Anyway, after a few years of shaking tins in the local shopping centre instead, which also didn’t produce that much, their Church decided to try something different. Each of the families in the Church were asked to come up with an idea to raise about £20. One family decided to give up something for the duration of Christian Aid week, and put the money into the collection. Other people have held coffee mornings, whilst Mum and Dad decided to hold a Trains and Teas afternoon, where Dad and a friend Peter who in charge of the local 16mm group would run trains for the afternoon, and Mum would provide teas. Myself and Beth went along to provide extra pairs of hands with the trains and teas respectively, and Beth also provided extra cakes.

Drought?

Sadly, the weather was not exactly very good. Peter brought along a gazebo, which kept the water off the visitors, however you can see quite the volume of water that collected. (Incidentally, for those not in the UK, this is what the worst drought in a century looks like…) Just to really rub things in, come 5pm when people were heading home, that was when the sun came out! Having said that, everybody seemed to have a good time, and enjoyed watching the trains – and in some cases having a go at driving them too – and also sitting and chatting afterwards. More to the point, the afternoon managed to raise £161 for Christian Aid. This has gone towards the total collected by the whole Church of over £1200 – massively more than the street collections have produced in the past, and also significantly more than the street collections we’ve carried out in Finchampstead have produced.

I took various pictures during the afternoon – unfortunately I forgot to check the charge on my spare camera batteries, so there are only a few with the digital camera, the rest being taken on the phone. The pictures can be seen in our photo gallery, and I have also posted a few movie sequences taken on the digital camera to YouTube, one of which is below.

Church

Going Round in Circles in Bracknell

1 Comment

Bracknell has a bit of a reputation for being difficult to navigate. Again tonight it proved it’s reputation. Despite having printed out a map, we still got lost trying to find St Andrew’s Priestwood. Having looked at the map again once we’d found it, we’d actually circled around it almost completely before actually getting there!

The reason for our trip to Bracknell was to go along and support Rev Andrew Frearson as he was licensed as Team Vicar of St Andrew’s. As you may know Andrew spent his recent six month sabbatical at St James, having been a good friend of Rev Richard for many years. Ultimately he has come back to the UK, having spent the past few years working in the Atlanta Diocese in the USA. He is also bringing with him his American wife and step-daughter, who as Beth well knows, are probably just hitting the culture shock of landing in the UK – needless to say, Beth gave them our phone number just in case they need any help from someone who has been through the same thing.

The service was pretty good, if slightly different from what we’re used to at St James. St Andrew’s is much more towards the Anglo-Catholic end of the spectrum in terms of churchmanship, so there was lots of incense wafting around. Having said that, liturgy wise it was pretty straightforward and familiar – and I was pleased to find that they used the modern Lord’s Prayer too.

In fact the church as a whole is a bit different from Finchampstead. Whereas we are an ancient country Church in an affluent area, St Andrew’s is a modern building (built in the 1990’s) in one of the first of the big post-war estates that surround the centre of Bracknell. Whilst at St James our problems are often trying to find a way to fit everybody in, whilst maintaining our ageing building, the opposite would seem to be the case at St Andrew’s. Whilst it may well be that a Tuesday evening was a difficult night, and that a Sunday morning may be better, but I was really surprised at the numbers of empty seats in the congregation – compare that with when Rev Richard was licensed at St James when we had to run a video link across into the Parish Centre in order to accommodate everybody who wanted to come. Certainly I think that Andrew will have some interesting challenges ahead, and certainly some very different challenges to those which Rev Richard has in Finchampstead.