VICKERSTOWN METHODIST CHURCH
Warren Street
Barrow-in-Furness
LA14 3QY
Vickerstown Methodist 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.
After the disruption of Covid and the various lockdowns we were delighted to resume meeting for worship regularly on the joyous occasion of Easter Sunday 2021 – the Easter cross we created, decorated with greenery and flowers from the church garden as signs of new life and hope, is pictured later. We still place our chairs a short distance apart and have hand sanitiser available, and some attendees wear masks on occasion – we want everyone to feel comfortable attending worship. It was lovely to see how church members kept in touch throughout the lockdowns and supported each other by phone, but we do enjoy meeting together again and sharing coffee and fellowship after services too! It has been great to welcome a few new people in the last couple of years, though we remain a small congregation. 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 have a good relationship with the other two Walney churches, particularly St. Mary’s (Anglican) with members often attending each others’ events and some 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.
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. We also sometimes join with St. Mary’s for their services, or welcome them to our worship. 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 hot chocolate, and sometimes Fairtrade biscuits) and to promote awareness of Fairtrade – we have a themed coffee morning in ‘Fairtrade Fortnight’ every year, with displays, tastings and fundraising for the Fairtrade Foundation (see www.fairtrade.org.uk for further details). This is important to us as a means of seeking greater fairness and justice in God’s world. 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; we check annually that we are still eligible for this and are gradually working towards achieving a silver award – we’re not quite there yet but it is getting very close!
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. 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 (in memory of longstanding member Joan Roberts), 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 and Revelation. In Lent and Advent we often share these study meetings with 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.
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 produce (which is then passed on to the local Foodbank or auctioned for Christian Aid). We appreciate this even more now, having had to pause these services for a while due to Covid restrictions. There is no Sunday school at present but we did support Walney’s monthly ‘Messy Church’ based at St. Mary’s; again this is yet to restart after stopping due to Covid restrictions but hopefully it can return at some point as a means of connecting the island’s families to its churches: numbers were variable but about 30-40 children was probably the average, with almost as many accompanying adults.
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.