Welcome to Seaford Parish – we are two buildings – St Leonard’s in the centre of town, and St Luke’s on the outskirts of Seaford near Chyngton Primary School.
I recorded this – the link –
St Leonard’s, here, is open every day (except Thursday) 10-1 for people to pop in, light a candle, pray, talk with someone – we always have two people here if you would like some company or just to sit quietly away from the busyness of life. We’d like to develop this outreach by installing a small kitchen so we can offer refreshments to this and other groups using the church.
On Thursdays we run a Toddler Group here where parents and carers can chat, support each other, build friendships and their toddlers can develop social skills and interact with new friends. Over in St Luke’s we do another Toddler Group on Wednesdays.
We also hold music concerts – particularly in St Leonard’s – a free Saturday lunchtime once a month, – but other choirs and charities like to use this space to raise funds for their work – such as Seaford Choral Society, – and Intergenerational Opera who are raising funds for their work in bringing Care homes and school choirs together – which we’re glad support by opening the space to them. Others using the church include: Seaford Photographic society who put on a display for a whole week, the local Saturday market sometimes set up their stall in here, particularly for Christmas, but anytime when we can see that the weather means the market would otherwise be cancelled. Schools and uniform groups also use this space at key times of the year – eg: Christmas. We provide outreach and activities in the church during Seaford Magic: Seaford town’s Christmas celebration day.
There are many other groups who would like to use the church facility but are restricted by the lack of enough facilities – particularly toilets, especially an accessible toilet. By providing these, along with a small kitchen and private meeting space in the church, we will enable more groups to feel able to use the space, increase the outreach services we can provide – lunches, or light snacks in a purpose-built environment and would better serve and increase the appeal of those groups we currently offer.
As a Church we also visit several local care homes each month to make sure that people who are part of our Church community still know that they are loved and remembered.
We go out to help Schools with their RE teaching and in turn Schools and Scouts visit us in St Leonard’s for their curriculum or scout badge work. We run Messy Church for families here once a month. In St Luke’s we run Sunday School and offer free after-school clubs for both primary and secondary school ages that are not faith based but community based clubs – with dodge ball, basket ball, a pool table, some fun crafts. We put on a free breakfast before the Sunday service and each year we run a free Holiday Club for Primary School kids and send each of them home with a free packed lunch. All done with appropriate safeguarding and DBS checks. We have a Lunch Club in St Lukes but we don’t yet have the facilities for this in St Leonard’s.
We would like to run these and other community outreach activities here in St Leonard’s but this will take some adjustments and improved resources as mentioned above and including a ramp to come up into a side room that can also be a warm hub in winter – a private meeting space, or small group meeting place.
On top of all this we do what Churches do – in Sunday Worship, midweek services, in Weddings, Baptisms, Funerals. If you can find a way to join in with what we do and support us, then that would be great. Thank you.
So much got missed out here. we were asked to make a 3 minute summary, you’d be welcome to try and write one!