At the beginning of 2011 the PCC agreed a set of proposals called Embrace the Future to develop our church buildings to make them more responsive to the worship and mission of our church life.

In February 2012, to start our fundraising we held a prayer vigil and gift day, the truly amazing sum of £237,000 was promised by the members of our community. This is a great start towards our goal of raising £725,000 to repair and develop our buildings, and has given us tremendous confidence to move ahead with our work.

In April we yarnbombed Portishead, wrapping some the town's public art, and other items, see the videos and pictures here.

Tenner a Tile

As part of the next stage in our campaign we are asking people to sponsor a new tile on the roof of St Nicholas’ Church, where we need to replace the 100 year old tiles. For information about the work needed on St Nicholas roof, and how to sponsor a tile, please the Tenner a Tile page.

We want St Peterʼs and St Nicholasʼ churches to be at the centre of the life of our growing town, to be available to all who wish to use them. These historic buildings need to be well maintained, welcoming and accessible, with good community facilities, reflecting the 21st century needs people have when visiting and using our buildings. Built for the greater glory of God we want our churches to be places where the best possible worship can be offered to God and in which and from which we can continue to serve the people of Portishead.

 

Welcome & Hospitality

We want to make our churches more welcoming and be able to provide better hospitality.  Towards this we want to provide better signage to our churches, improve the entrances and welcome areas, provide better facilities for providing refreshments, enhance our church heating and provide accessible toilets.

 

Participation

We want to improve people’s participation in our services.  Towards this we need to improve the sound system at both churches, introduce an audio visual system at St Peter’s and also bring the altar forward to improve its visibility to those in the North Aisle.

 

Space

We need to provide a variety of different spaces to respond to the different events that happen in our buildings.  At St Nicholas’ we intend to enlarge the Narthex to give us a larger meeting room for the parish.  At St Peter’s we want to create an improved children’s area in the North Aisle and create a small meeting room under an extended gallery.   We also need to explore how we can make St Peter’s feel less cluttered whilst also increasing the seating capacity for our larger services.

 

In addition to these improvements there are repairs to the stonework required at both churches and also need to replace the roof at St Nicholas’ Church.  The total cost of all these works is estimated at £725,000 of which the St Nicholas’ roof is the largest single item.  The development programme is being developed as a series of projects which will be undertaken as funding becomes available. The first project completed was the introduction of a new sound and audio visual system to St Peter’s, which was completed in the autumn of 2011.

 

Further details can be found here of the works at St Peter’s and at St Nicholas’.

If you would like to make a donation, please contact the Church office, or you can donate online using our page on the CAF web site.