VICKERSTOWN METHODIST CHURCH
Warren Street
Barrow-in-Furness
LA14 3QY
Vickerstown Methodist Church celebrated 25 years of meeting and worshipping in what we still think of as our ‘new’ building in June 2023, sharing a meal, looking back over our scrapbooks of the fundraising effort and the building process, and having a special anniversary service. The building stands on the site that once housed the wooden Sunday School hut, next to the flats built on the footprint of the much larger original church.
We are a small congregation, usually around 10-15 at a Sunday service. It has been great to welcome a few new people in the last couple of years, and anyone can join us at any time. While Covid caused great disruption, it was lovely to see how church members kept in touch throughout the lockdowns and supported each other by phone. The Easter cross pictured later, decorated with greenery and flowers from the church garden as signs of new life and hope, was created for Easter Sunday in 2021 when we were finally able to meet again for gathered worship – not forgetting sharing coffee and fellowship after services! We have continued to place chairs a short distance apart, as this makes it easier for everyone to get around. The weekly ‘Worship at Home’ sheets started during lockdown continue to be circulated (and much appreciated) as an alternative option and some have explored online worship resources, learning new ways of meeting with God in difficult times. We are located within the Vickerstown area on Walney Island, part of Barrow-in-Furness. The church enjoys a lovely view over Walney Channel and up towards the Lake District hills (as well as a fine view of the shipyard buildings!) over its sheltered garden. To find us, come over the bridge from Barrow and turn right down the Promenade past the Ferry pub, look out on your left for the church sign pointing up the bank next to the wooden cross. Take the first left turn, then immediately turn left again and then once more, drive to the end of the road (Warren Street) and you will be there.
We like to work with other churches where possible, particularly our closest neighbours St. Mary’s (Anglican) with members often attending each others’ events. We occasionally have joint services such as for Palm Sunday, midnight communion on Christmas Eve and the annual Methodist ‘Covenant’ service of recommitment to our faith which is usually held in January. Vickerstown is part of Barrow Mission Community and Churches Together in Barrow, as well as SW Cumbria United Area (which will become part of a new Cumbria Circuit from September 2025, when we will find new ways of maintaining local connections).
Vickerstown’s minister is Rev Dr Helen Hooley, who came to the church in September 2021. The main Sunday service is at 11:00 a.m., usually for about an hour followed by coffee and fellowship. The church has a prayer group that normally meets fortnightly and leads a ‘Prayer and Praise’ service approximately once every 6 weeks. Helen leads worship at Vickerstown regularly, though as Area Superintendent and minister of Barrow’s other Methodist and URC churches she has many other responsibilities so can only be with us a couple of times each quarter. The other services are led by other ministers and lay preachers from across the United Area as well as some visiting preachers, with one service most months ‘on screen’: pre-recorded by two or three of the Area’s ministers and local preachers working together. There is no regular evening service at present but there may be occasional worship at different times for special events – in 2023 we hosted a World Day of Prayer service on Friday 1st March. All are welcome at any service. Each Saturday or Sunday the weekly notice sheet is posted on the noticeboard outside the front door, with full details of all services and other planned events.
Vickerstown is a Fairtrade Church, a commitment to use Fairtrade tea and coffee at all church events, to explore using other products (we also use sugar and sometimes hot chocolate) and to promote awareness of Fairtrade – we have a themed coffee morning in ‘Fairtrade Fortnight’ every year. This is important to us as a means of seeking greater fairness and justice in God’s world; see www.fairtrade.org.uk for further details. We are also an Eco-Church, having initially gained an Eco-Congregation award in 2010 reflecting a focus on creation and stewardship in worship and bible study, environmental awareness in Church life and efforts to open this up to the wider community. This was renewed in spring 2014, then in January 2016 ‘Eco-Congregation’ was re-named ‘Eco-Church’ and the award scheme was restructured: it now has three levels, Bronze, Silver and Gold, calculated on a points system from an online survey about the church’s activities. We were delighted to find that we already qualified for a Bronze award and received this in summer 2016; after gradually working towards it over many years we became the proud recipients of a Silver award in October 2024. The survey is being revamped, so it will be a challenge to ensure we remain eligible for this and can continue to display the certificate in our entrance porch!
We usually have a monthly coffee morning (10 – 11:30 a.m. on a Saturday) with cake, bring and buy and Fairtrade stalls – the dates for these vary but will always be advertised via the notice sheet (displayed outside the main doors) and a poster on the Promenade-facing noticeboard. Mostly this is for church funds (as well as the value as a social event), though once or twice a year we support a charity with the proceeds, most recently raising £100 for the Methodist charity ‘Fund for Human Need’ in October 2023 then £40 each for Barrow’s homeless support group and the local dementia-friendly tea service in June 2024. There is also a ‘Food and Fellowship’ social gathering for a meal and a chat every other month, and this group enjoys making good use of the small profits from members’ contributions. Over the years we have used this money to ‘twin’ both our toilets with new facilities in poor communities in Burundi – please admire the certificates in our loos if you ever visit! – as well as supporting safe water projects and other initiatives working to improve people’s lives in less developed countries, some through Christian Aid. Closer to home, we made a donation to the Cumbria flood relief fund in December 2015 after Storm Desmond, and have sent money to St. Mary’s Hospice twice (in memory of longstanding members Joan Roberts and Gillian Ogilvie), Furness Homelessness Support Group and the Alzheimer’s Society. At Christmas each year the church supports ‘All we Can’, a specifically Methodist charity supporting life-changing projects in developing countries, and in spring 2022 we also contributed to their Ukraine appeal.
Vickerstown also usually hosts the United Area Bonfire Party each year as the garden and view over the rest of Barrow (to admire everyone else’s fireworks) can both be seen from inside for those who prefer to stay in the warm. This raises money for the Methodist Fund for World Mission. We hold Bible Study meetings in the church roughly fortnightly, though this can vary a bit, and most years around June we follow the ‘Bible month’ resources focusing on a particular book of the Bible: so far this has covered James, Jonah, Colossians, Ruth, Isaiah, Revelation and Genesis. In Lent and Advent we often share these study meetings with some of our friends from St. Mary’s. The church was also open with a series of ‘Prayer Stations’ on June 3rd 2022 for the nationwide wave of prayer titled ‘Thy Kingdom Come’: we are only a small church but still like to get involved in major events where we can. Our 2018 Fairtrade coffee morning was tied into the county-wide ‘Moving Mountains’ Mission and in 2024 we contributed a prayer station to a town-wide Holy Week event hosted by the Salvation Army.
Rainbows and Brownies meet weekly at Vickerstown. Beavers, Cubs and Scouts are run jointly between the three Walney churches and meet in their own hall nearby. It is lovely to welcome the uniformed organisations to Sunday morning worship at Parade services four or five times a year, particularly at special occasions such as Harvest when we enjoy decorating the church with berries from the garden and donations of items suitable for passing on to Barrow Foodbank (donations of money go to Christian Aid). There is no Sunday school at present and in recent years wider work with young people has mostly involved helping out at St. Mary’s when they have events such as Messy Church and themed activity days.
The current church building was opened in 1998 and is a single main room that doubles as worship area when the furniture is out and hall when it is away, with many configurations in between. There are toilets and a kitchen, entrance and lobby, a rather small vestry and a storeroom. As well as the church events above it is available for use for children’s parties, quiet days, community groups etc. and also serves as the local polling station. We like to know that the facilities are being used and that people are coming into the building – we don’t have many regular users at present so would be happy to hear from new groups interested in using the premises. We have a defibrillator on the outside of the building, for community use as and when needed, thanks to the Walney First Responders, and also a noticeboard visible from the Promenade to help people know we are there! Please contact Karen Edmondson on 01229 474601 or aberkle1@yahoo.co.uk for enquiries about booking the church, or Rev Dr Helen Hooley on 01229 830844 or helen.hooley@methodist.org.uk for other enquiries.