"We have recently completed our sanctuary refurbishment programme at our site in Petersfield. This project has seen us relaying the floor and the installation of new underfloor heating, we also decided the time was right to replace the fixed pews (which were painted in an interesting glossy blue…) with new, comfortable chairs. Like many churches, we have fewer people able to play the organ and so we decided to remove our old pipe organ and replace it with an electronic one we had at our other smaller site in Liss. This has created a lot more space within that main space. There has also been a complete redecoration and a brand-new AV system installed. 

As a church, we knew that we needed to undertake at the very least, a full redecoration project, but we wanted to look further than this and try to discern together what God was calling us to do to ensure that the blessing of our building would carry on serving the community long after many of us are gone from this place.

Our aim was to create a warm, inviting, and usable space for the benefit not just of our Sunday morning congregation but also for the community as a whole.

We were incredibly blessed to receive financial help not only from our Synod but also from the Congregational and General Trust. I am certainly not a financial whiz kid, far from it in fact. But the application process was simple and with a team of us contributing to filling in the forms, we had it done and submitted in not very long at all.

I had hoped that the trust might be able to support us in some way, but I was astounded by the level of financial support that was offered to us and we are extremely grateful for this. As with any big project, there were a number of stresses and strains along the way but knowing that we had this chunk of funding given to us was really valuable indeed."